


Like the Hawthorn Bough that on the Living Tree Stands

by Anonymous



Category: Ladyhawke (1985)
Genre: Magic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Philippe Gaston virtuously embarked on a quest to the monastery he was raised, nobly (to his mind, at least) sacrificing the company of Isabeau d'Anjou and Etienne de Navarre, he never imagined that an encounter with two old not-quite-friends would leave him in need of a rescue. But magic, it seems, is not done with Etienne and Isabeau any more than it is with Philippe, and it'll take all three of them to get Philippe home.
Relationships: Isabeau d'Anjou/Etienne Navarre, Isabeau d'Anjou/Philippe Gaston/Etienne Navarre
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	1. A lamb, my lady, is indeed powerless against a bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coaldustcanary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/gifts).



“I don’t mean to criticize, of course, Lord,” Philippe said, shaking yet another pebble out of his shoe. “But if you _want_ people to take the path of virtue, you might consider making it a bit more appealing.”

 _The path of virtue_ , in this case, led from Aquila, where Philippe had been a thief, home to Rimont, where he had been…well, still a thief, but one with the youthful potential to live a virtuous life. Philippe was not so much older now than he had been when he left so as to be unredeemable, he felt. He was a new man, the scales fallen from his eyes, his self-deceptions overcome by the sight of miracles, Saul on the road to Damascus.

He _could_ have been on the road to Touraine, where Isabeau had inherited grand estates and where she and Navarre had invited him to come and live. And he had very much wanted to. But he was a man transformed, on a pilgrimage to the Abbaye de Combelongue where he had been baptized as a boy. In a selfless act of self-martyrdom, he had politely refused their offer and struck out on his own.

“It really had nothing to do with the desires of the flesh, Lord,” Philippe said, letting a bit of reproach enter his voice. “It’s not as if they were offering anything like that. And even if they were, surely I ought to get _more_ credit for avoiding such temptation.” Not, he thought sourly, that there was much tempting about the thought of Isabeau and Navarre coming out of their glow of beautiful and noble love to realize they had been stuck with a peasant thief they had no idea what to do with. He had no doubt that they would have been kind to him, and he was not so ungrateful a wretch as to reject their friendship. But how terribly awkward it would have been for all of them, with neither family ties nor common background nor even the normal sort of lord-and-subject relationship binding them together. As it said in the Holy Book, “but for thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, neither hot, I shall begin to cast thee out of my mouth.”

He had no interest in being spat out of anyone’s mouth. Better to cast himself on the mercy of the church than to live as an unwanted smudge of dirt on a beautiful work of art.

Now if only the county of Foix was just a _little_ less far away….

Philippe sighed, put his shoes back on, and set himself back on the road. If he wanted to reach shelter by nightfall, he’d need to move a little faster—from what he remembered, the nearest village was some four or five miles away.

The countryside, he told himself, was not so unpleasant, and it would become a great deal more pleasant once he was out of this mountainous stretch and back on the Mediterranean coast, where the sea breezes were pleasant and with every step west the people spoke a tongue that sounded closer to his own. And yet it was very hard not to feel that God was painting the self-sacrificial route of the pilgrim in a very unattractive light, he thought as a cold breeze cut through his too-thin cloak. He wrapped it more closely around himself and fantasized about sitting next to a fire at a cozy little Alpine tavern, a cup of hot wine in his hand and a bowl of rich, meaty stew in his lap…

He was so engrossed in this vision that he missed the sounds of footsteps. In fairness, such sounds were easy to miss along this cold, rocky spine of the world, where the sky seemed to eat the noises of the earth and spit them back as icy winds as sharp as a reproachful tongue. And yet Philippe kicked himself—in the confines of his head, of course—for having missed the two men, who were clopping along on horseback and making no efforts whatsoever to hide their approach.

Philippe drew to one side of the road, to keep out of their way. It was only good manners, and what was more, Philippe did not like his odds of either fighting or escaping from them if it should happen that they looked on him with a malicious eye. Best to try and avoid their attention altogether.

But it was not to be. As he stared at the dirt, a familiar voice called, “Hey, Philippe! Philippe the Mouse, is that you?”

He looked up, blinking. The man who had spoken was thick-shouldered, seemingly broader than he was tall, with a mild face and a luxurious shock of reddish-gold hair. His companion was thinner, with dark brown hair and a more brooding aspect. Philippe knew both of them. Theoretically he supposed it was a blessing to encounter a familiar face or two in such a lonesome place, but personally he had his doubts as to whether this was a development that boded well for either his virtuous intentions or his well-being.

“Raoul,” he said with a polite smile. “Luchetto. What a pleasant surprise to meet you again.”

Luchetto of Piacenza, who’d always been a sullen sort, snorted without twitching his face even a muscle. It was quite impressive, actually. Raoul, son of Fulk the Butcher, meanwhile, smiled that good-hearted smile that had often been their ticket out of the guards’ hands or into a storeroom full of valuables. “You’ve become quite famous, Mouse,” he said pleasantly. “I’m surprised to see you here, too, and on foot to boot. Didn’t you rescue the king of England’s cousin from a magical curse?”

Philippe did a few quick calculations in his mind and realized that yes, depending on how you defined the word ‘cousin,’ Isabeau probably did answer to that description. This wasn’t the sort of thing one boasted about to a pair of burglars, however, so he shrugged and said, “Oh, you know how rumor is, Raoul.”

“So it’s a _rumor_ that you escaped from the dungeons of Aquila and helped kill the Bishop?” asked Luchetto. His gravelly voice had not become any more beautiful in the intervening years since Philippe had seen him last. “Because a friend of a friend says you were bragging about your escape in an inn not so very long ago.”

Once again, Philippe was paying the wages of sin. Pride going before a fall, and all that. “Oh, I did escape, that’s quite true. And the bit with the Bishop…well, I suppose you can say that I did _help_ , but as I’m sure rumor will tell you, it was His Grace’s former captain of the guard who was responsible for that, not me.”

Raoul nodded. “Rumor does indeed say that. Rumor says quite a bit more about that captain, too, a lot of it very far-fetched. I’ll be honest, I don’t know _what_ to believe.”

Perhaps Raoul _was_ being honest, but experience had not made Philippe particularly inclined to believe him. Even the young and naïve Philippe of a few years ago had known better than to put his faith wholly in the goodwill of Raoul, son of Fulk the Butcher.

“Well,” he said, trying to think of a way to extricate himself from the conversation, “as you know, it’s for the great and noble people of this world to have such adventures. The rest of us just do what we can to get by.”

“Isn’t that God’s honest truth,” said Raoul with a laugh. He patted the saddle behind him. “Ride with us for a bit, Philippe! This cold wind will freeze your balls off, and I want to hear just what parts of what the rumors say are true.”

 _This would be a very good time for a sign, Lord,_ thought Philippe. On the one hand, he was sorely tempted to rest his feet from walking and perhaps reach a nice warm inn a bit faster. On the other hand, Luchetto and Raoul had been dreadful temptations to sin when Philippe was a younger man, in addition to their other less appealing qualities, and he was not at all sure that they wouldn’t try to get money out of Isabeau and Navarre through him. On the third hand, they had never done him any real harm, not _truly,_ and after all, didn’t the scriptures say _Judge not, lest ye be judged_? Philippe was hardly in a place to be throwing stones at liars and thieves, being far from without sin himself in either area.

“Why, thank you,” he said at last. “That’s a kind offer, Raoul, I think I’ll take you up on it.”

Neither Raoul, nor Luchetto, nor Philippe was a particularly skilled rider, and their horses were not finely bred palfreys or well-trained destriers but weary nags who didn’t especially care for being burdened with a second man on their backs, and so it took some time and discomfort and soothing of the horse to get Philippe on the saddle behind Raoul. Philippe had to admit once he was up there that, although his thighs were not particularly fond of horse riding, his face and body _were_ fond of having someone in front of him to block the wind.

“Ah, Lord,” he said, “what a blessing it is to be warm. I won’t forget it, I can tell you that much.”

Raoul laughed at this. “Oh, I imagine it’ll be like most blessings—it’ll last you a while, and then you’ll want something else.”

“Never,” Philippe informed him. “I’m done with these weak-willed attempts at virtue. I’m practicing being a steadfast, respectable citizen these days.”

“Are you indeed,” grumbled Luchetto. Philippe didn’t know why he was always grumbling things. It wasn’t like Philippe had ever done him any harm. Really, if Philippe were the sort to hold a grudge, _he_ really ought to be the one grumbling. 

“Yes,” he said with some asperity. Some dignity. Perhaps Philippe was in no position to judge Luchetto and Raoul, but he hardly thought that they were in a position to judge him, either. “When one has witnessed a miracle, one finds that one’s will is remarkably strengthened by knowledge of the divine workings among men.”

“So this business about the magic is true then?” asked Raoul. “I mean, it was no secret that the Bishop was one of those ‘do as I preach, not as I do’ types, but for him to sell his soul to be able to cast spells…well, that sounds like a tall tale a drunkard would spout in his cups, doesn’t it?”

Admittedly, it didn’t sound plausible when one said it like that. And yet, Philippe had seen the proofs of it with his own eyes. He didn’t need Raoul or Luchetto to believe him. “Believe what you wish,” he said. “I know the truth.”

Luchetto scoffed again, but Raoul made a considering noise. “All right, then. True or false, Mouse—you witnessed the Bishop performing his devilish rites.”

“False,” Philippe confessed.

“And there you have it,” said Luchetto.

“Hush,” admonished Raoul. “If you didn’t witness the Bishop doing magic, how can you say you know the rumors are true, Philippe?”

“I saw the victims of his magic. I saw the effect it had on them.” And never in his life would he forget it, thought Philippe, feeling an echo of the desperate misery he had felt at watching the golden light spill over the grass, shining in Navarre’s eyes as he reached out to touch Isabeau, hearing Isabeau scream as she was taken once again from her love and transformed by the cruel arts of a jealous, twisted heart.

Raoul hummed interestedly. “True or false—you saw the former captain of the guard transform into a wolf.”

“True.”

“Bull _shit_ ,” Luchetto interjected.

“No, it’s true,” said Philippe. Perhaps it was foolish to be so forthcoming, but after all Etienne and Isabeau owned half of Touraine and were so far from this cold mountain, in miles and status and honor, that nothing Philippe said could harm them now. “It was a curse the Bishop had cast. I saw him transform, and I saw the wolf more than once. That’s why the Bishop put a bounty on wolves’ pelts, you know. When Navarre killed the Bishop, it was nothing more than divine justice.”

Luchetto and Raoul exchanged a glance, and Philippe thought with a sinking feeling that their next question would be about Etienne de Navarre, and how Philippe knew him so well as to refer to him as simply ‘Navarre,’ and how much Philippe knew about the state of Navarre’s pockets. But instead, Raoul asked, “Was it killing the Bishop that broke the curse? I wasn’t aware that you or the captain of the guard knew much about magic.”

“Oh,” said Philippe vaguely, “it was to do with the motion of the stars, you know. I had no part of that.” No part but using his tongue as best he could to steer Navarre away from self-destruction and a tragic end for him and Isabeau, and toward a future in which they both walked in the sunlight like they had been born to.

“So you don’t know how the magic was undone?” inquired Raoul. “It seems you knew enough of the captain’s doings to see him cursed and restored—did he not say something about how the magic worked?”

As relieved as Philippe had been not to have Raoul and Luchetto inquire too deeply into his relationship with Navarre and Isabeau, it was strange indeed for Raoul to inquire so deeply about magic, or indeed about anything unless he thought he would profit from it. Philippe wanted very much to reach down to his belt pouch to reassure himself that the jewel was still there—that perfect, beautiful reminder of his time with Isabeau and Navarre, that Navarre himself had pried out of his family sword with a knife and told Philippe to feed himself with but that Philippe would sooner die than part with. But of course to feel for it and check that Luchetto and Raoul had not stolen it would be to let them know it was there, and so he contented himself with picturing it, and the unaccustomed warmth on Navarre’s face as he had handed it to Philippe, his harsh features suddenly transformed as when a warm spring breeze chased clouds from a now-blue sky.

“No,” he said to Raoul. “And I would not have asked. It doesn’t pay for common folk to meddle in such things.”

“Doesn’t it?” asked Raoul.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, only think of it.” Raoul gestured expansively with one hand, as if offering Philippe and Luchetto the horizon. “Not to be changed against one’s will, of course, that wouldn’t do anyone any good. But to be able to change oneself! Let’s say you’re looking for a treasure you know is kept under guard. If you could change your face to that of a household servant—or perhaps change yourself entirely, to a bird to spy out when the family leaves it unguarded, or to a dog to slip in the door—my God, think of the possibilities!”

Philippe took a moment to think of the possibilities, and winced. “And the possibility that you wouldn’t be able to turn yourself back?” he asked. “Or that some boy with a slingshot might shoot you down as a bird? And that’s assuming that you could figure out how to do it in the first place without—without killing yourself, or being totally destroyed by the forces you were trying to control. No, Raoul, I don’t think any sensible thief would try it.”

“What business is that of yours?” asked Luchetto. “After all, you’ve said yourself that you aren’t a thief anymore.”

“Take it as friendly advice from one who wishes you well,” said Philippe, wondering how they had gotten such a strange idea into their heads in the first place. Imperius had his books, the Bishop of Aquila had all the wealth in the world, but what did Luchetto and Raoul think that they had that could let them command such powerful, supernatural forces?

“Well,” said Raoul with a laugh, “you have our thanks for that. Now, enough of this chatter—Philippe, where were you going to stay tonight?”

“I don’t think we’re so very far from Pusclavius,” said Philippe, who hadn’t been paying attention and genuinely wasn’t sure where they were at this point. “I thought I might see if there’s an inn with a bed there.”

Luchetto nodded as if this were a reasonable enough thing to say. Raoul said, “Sure, you can do that. But if you come along with us a little further to Lanzada, we’ve a friend there who’ll be sure to give you a place by the fire for free.”

“Who?” asked Philippe, wrinkling his nose. Raoul and Luchetto had a great many friends, but one had to be very careful about accepting these friends’ hospitality. There were thieves, thought Philippe, and then there were thieves. “What friend?”

“Oh, you’d like him,” said Raoul lightly. “Used to be a man of the church, I think. Read more books than anyone else I know, that’s for certain. Very clever chap.”

“And how is it that you know him?” Philippe could not easily imagine a lettered man of the church hanging around with Raoul and Luchetto. But then again, he and Imperius got along all right, so perhaps it really did take all sorts.

“You’ve got a lot of questions,” said Luchetto, practically growling, but Raoul made a chiding noise with his tongue against his teeth.

“Now, it’s only fair, Luchetto, I had a lot of questions for Philippe, too.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at Philippe and said, “Met him in Aquila, point of fact, about the time the Bishop was killed. He isn’t a big drinker, is Pietro of Salerno, but he was certainly free with his money that day. Bought a drink for everyone in the place. We got to talking, and he said if we ever were in these parts to look him up. So? What do you say?”

The real question, thought Philippe, was whether he trusted himself to get out of scrapes more than he mistrusted Raoul and Luchetto. And when he thought about it, he found that he did, although perhaps he was not unmoved by the prospect of having a warm spot by the hearth to sleep rather than some drafty horse barn in Pusclavius.

“All right,” he said. Raoul favored him with a warm smile, but Philippe didn’t take it personally. Raoul had warm smiles for everyone—they didn’t really mean anything.

He didn’t regret his decision as they pushed on and the sun began to lower on the horizon. It stayed light late around here—at such a high elevation, the sun seemed to take forever to disappear entirely, and the sky was filled with beautiful deep oranges and reds as it slowly sank—but as the sun proceeded on its journey, its warmth vanished, and the wind seemed to chill more bitterly. Philippe was not at all unhappy when they pulled into a town that Philippe supposed was Lanzada and Luchetto asked a passerby after the whereabouts of Pietro of Salerno.

The man gave Luchetto a profoundly suspicious look—which, truly, was the only reasonable response to Luchetto asking one anything—but he pointed them toward a prosperous-looking inn at the end of the road.

Inside was blessedly warm, the main hall of the inn warmed by a large, crackling fire in the hearth, and Philippe took a moment to thank God that so far his fortune today had been so beneficent. Perhaps it wouldn’t be asking too much for a nice bowl of whatever it was he could smell bubbling in a big pot over the fire.

The locals in the inn peered at their party warily, but Raoul took no notice, striding to the corner where solitary man with a long, glum face was sitting. “Pietro,” he greeted cheerfully. “Fancy meeting you here!”

“So,” said the man coolly, not looking particularly friendly, “you made it after all.”

“We did indeed!” He slung an arm around Philippe’s shoulders and dragged him over, which put Philippe uncomfortably in mind of when he had been a boy of seventeen and this had been Raoul’s habit whenever they walked into a room where a burglary was being planned. “Pietro of Salerno,” said Raoul, seemingly unconscious of Philippe’s unease, “meet an old friend of mind. This is Philippe Gaston, though of course you might know him as the Mouse.”

At this, the man’s glum expression became more like that of a falcon eying its prey. “The Mouse, you say.” He brought his hands together, his fingertips meeting as if in prayer. “The one who escaped from the dungeons at Aquila?”

“I’m flattered that you’ve heard of me, sir,” said Philippe, who was, actually—it was nice to be recognized by someone who didn’t wish to kill him or throw him in a dungeon. “Raoul and Luchetto speak well of you, as well. I hear you’re an educated man?”

Pietro smiled. It was not a terribly nice smile, thin-lipped and a little tight around the edges, but then, not everyone could have the brilliant smile of a Navarre or an Isabeau, or even, for that matter, a Raoul. “I would call myself so,” he said, then stood from the table. “Come. We have matters to discuss.”

It seemed that Pietro had hired a small chamber on the upper level of the inn, just big enough for a narrow bed in the corner but with a chimney along one side radiating heat from the fireplace downstairs. Ah, thought Philippe, to be able to curl up against that chimney to sleep—the thought was positively luxurious.

Raoul and Luchetto unceremoniously sat themselves on the floor by the chimney while Pietro sat on the bed. Philippe hovered indecisively for a moment before deciding that, after sitting on a horse behind Raoul for much of the afternoon, there was no need to stand on ceremony, and he tucked himself between Luchetto and the door.

“So,” said Pietro, fixing Philippe with another of those piercing glances. “What is it that our friends have told you about me?”

Philippe shrugged. “Only that you’re well-read, and that’s something to be proud of. And did they say that you were once a man of the cloth? I ask because I, too, spent my youth under the watchful care of the church. Perhaps you’ve heard of the canons of the Abbaye de Combelongue?”

“Heard of them? Yes, though I cannot say that I frequent the company of churchmen much these days. It is my considered opinion that the Church in its current establishment is a hotbed of hypocrisy, of limited thinking and unlimited greed.”

“You speak very frankly, sir,” said Philippe, surprised despite himself. Certainly everyone complained about that devil the Bishop of Aquila, but it was typically on less principled grounds. Perhaps this Pietro of Salerno was another made in the mold of Imperius, in which case Raoul had been right and Philippe would like him very much indeed.

“Do you disagree, Monsieur Gaston? Rumor has it that you have had your own troubles with the church. That you and it have long been at odds.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Philippe could feel his back straightening. Pride did go before a fall, they said, and true it was, yet Philippe had not come from nowhere, or been born in a gutter, no matter what others said. He was not without his own faith, and despite the series of misadventures his life had been, he felt that he and God understood each other. “I have the utmost respect for the canons who raised me—nothing but austerity and prayer for them. Can’t say the life appealed to me, but I have no quarrel with their devotion to poverty, chastity, and obedience and all that.”

“Of course,” said Pietro, smiling his thin knife-edge of a smile, “but it’s not to them I refer. I am speaking of the Bishop of Aquila.”

“Oh, well.” Philippe shrugged. “That’s no rumor, that’s God’s honest truth. But then, I would hardly consider the Bishop to speak for the church. A dreadful man, really.”

“So I gather.” That sharp smile twitched, and it was no longer a smile, but a dour, forbidding line of displeasure. “A rather sordid affair, all told.”

There were many of the Bishop’s actions to which the word ‘sordid’ could apply, and navigating this conversation, Philippe thought, might benefit greatly from knowing what Pietro’s personal definition of the word was. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Can you _imagine_ , Monsieur Gaston, attaining so high a degree of scholarship and knowledge as the Bishop, working to master not only earthly powers but _un_ earthly ones, attaining such a command over magical forces as to be able to change men into beasts and beasts into men—and all to what end? For the sake of lusts of the flesh, for some—” He made a dismissive gesture. “Some silly girl whose appeal seems to have been that he couldn’t have her, and who was unlikely to submit to him under _that_ kind of persuasion.”

Mingled indignation and vindication warred with themselves in Philippe’s mind. “Silly girl” was the last description in the _world_ that he would describe to Isabeau of Anjou, and her appeals were as many as fish in the sea. To love her was natural—it came as easily to Philippe as breathing. And yet Signore Pietro had been right that it was a grotesque travesty to use magical forces to punish her for not loving the Bishop, or to even wish to punish her for her earnest, clear-eyed, devoted love for Navarre, and that such gargantuan cruelty could never have inspired Isabeau to transfer her love to the Bishop. “I believe that there can be a kind of nobility in love for a worthy subject,” Philippe said carefully. “It needn’t be described as a ‘lust of the flesh.’ But to allow such feelings to twist you into tyranny—you’re right, sir, that is indeed sordid.”

Pietro fixed Philippe with a sharp look. “I’m told you met them? Navarre and his lover?”

Philippe nodded cautiously. “I did.”

“Hmm,” said Pietro, sounding unsatisfied. “Well. I suppose we’re all entitled to the odd moment of sentimentality.”

 _Oh, thank you, do you think so_? This Pietro was a cold fish, thought Philippe, and he no longer felt optimistic about his chances of liking the man. But then, he only had to get the man to like him enough to offer him a night’s hospitality before Philippe could be back on his way to Rimont. He made what he hoped was a polite noise of agreement.

“Does seem an awful waste,” Raoul threw in, and Philippe almost started at the reminder that he and Luchetto were still in the room with them. There was something about Pietro’s cold stare that made Philippe feel like his namesake, frozen before the fixed glare of the owl.

As if Raoul had noticed Philippe’s carefully restrained twitch, he smiled at Philippe—not the warm, friendly smile that invited camaraderie and had led Philippe down many a sinful path, but the ever-so-slightly superior one that indicated that its recipient was the butt of the joke. “What I mean is,” he said, “to use all that power trying to get a woman.”

“If you’ve got money,” Luchetto put in, “you can get a woman anyway.”

“True enough,” said Pietro. “Though in my judgment, the only real reason to seek such arcane knowledge and power is for its own sake. What does the man who commands mystical forces and understands the secret workings of the universe require of earthly pleasure?”

Philippe felt a cold shiver run up the back of his spine.

“Well,” said Raoul cheerfully, “you might not need earthly pleasures, but you do need earthly goods. Speaking of!” He rummaged around in the pouch at his belt, from which he drew, of all things, the skeleton of a snake, and a tiny glass vial of something that Philippe couldn’t identify.

Pietro made a pleased noise and reached for them, but Raoul drew his hand back. “You know the price,” he said. His voice was pleasant enough, but as someone who had _paid_ the price before, Philippe was beginning to feel as if he would have been better off walking the cold mountain paths rather than let himself be trapped in a room with these three men. _Lord_ , he asked in his mind, _if you deliver me from this, I promise I will never be led astray again, no matter how cold or hungry I am._

If he had not already believed Pietro to be indifferent to such things as fear or scruples, he would have been convinced by the cool calm with which the man said, “Yes, we have a deal. If I’m able to effect the transformation from man to animal and back, you can call on me to repeat the ritual at your convenience.”

“Ah,” said Philippe. His heart was racing; he only hoped that it didn’t show in his voice. His mouth felt dreadfully dry. “It seems as if I’m interrupting your business. Gentlemen, I’ll leave you to it.” He made as if to stand, but Raoul gripped the back of his tunic so that Philippe could barely keep his feet under him, and he knelt back on the floor.

“Oh, come on, Mouse,” said Raoul coaxingly. “This sort of thing needs an experienced team. No man on earth is better at getting in and out of places than you—think of how much better still you could be if you could creep in an open window as a _real_ mouse, turn back into a man on the inside, and unlock the door for us? If we could fly away from the guards like birds?”

“You’re mad.” Philippe tried to keep his voice from shaking. “You can’t do any such thing.”

Raoul shrugged. “Maybe not, but Signore Pietro can. And unlike the Bishop, he’s _not_ mad—I’ll wager he can do this…this turning things into other things…a good deal better than the Bishop.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” said Pietro drily.

Whatever animal instinct it was that kept Philippe’s eyes and mind focused while he was in danger kept his fear at bay like a lighting bolt in a cage as he sifted through possibilities. He’d already told Raoul and Luchetto he’d turned a new leaf, and it hadn’t meant a thing. He supposed he could try telling them he was out of practice, but even if they believed him, that would only mean they’d push him to do more jobs before…whatever it was they were going to use the magic for. Perhaps he could appeal to their pride. “I remember a day,” he said, “when you didn’t need _magic_ to rob a house. I don’t mean to be rude, but it seems to me as if you might have lost your touch, if you’re resorting to this kind of nonsense.”

Luchetto narrowed his eyes, but Raoul only smiled easily at him. “You know, Mouse, you’re right. No thief worth his salt would need to go to this kind of trouble to rob a house.” There was a knowing, conspiratorial glint in his eye, as if he and Philippe understood each other perfectly. Philippe felt a little ill. “Of course,” Raoul added, “I’m not so pathetic as that. Not yet.”

“So what _are_ you doing?” Philippe was stalling for time, now. If he could goad Raoul and Luchetto into getting loud enough that they disturbed other inn patrons, maybe he had a shot at escape. At Raoul’s hesitation, he said challengingly, “Well? You expect me to get turned into a mouse, but you’re not even going to tell me what the job is?”

At first he thought the plan had backfired—Luchetto stepped forward menacingly, and Philippe remembered with sudden, nauseating clarity that Luchetto had always subscribed to the theory that three men could keep a secret if one were dead. But Raoul nodded with what looked like respect and said, “Fair enough. You know the episcopal election in Rome?”

Philippe blinked before the question registered. “You mean, the election to replace the bishop of Aquila.”

“That’s the one,” said Raoul with a nod. “Well, word on the street is that the electors have made their selection, and they’ll be announcing it soon.”

“And?”

Raoul grinned. “And they’re saying it’ll be Louis of Dreux, Abbot of Bonneval.”

Louis of Dreux was a cousin of the king of France—everyone knew that he was in the church for ambition rather than love or faith, and rumor had it that he was fabulously wealthy. He’d consecrated a chapel five years ago in which he’d been given rich gifts by a number of local lords, and even the king himself. Philippe had the sinking sensation that he knew where this was going. He did his best to keep his face blank and uninterested. “So?”

“So, when he travels to take up the episcopal seat, rumor has it he’s taking the great chalice with him.”

Philippe had never seen the great chalice of Bonneval, but he didn’t need Raoul to explain what it was to him. Anyone who dealt in gold or jewels had heard of the great chalice, and those who dealt in _stolen_ gold and jewels talked about it in tones of envious longing. It was the masterwork of a generation, according to everyone who saw it—rimmed and stemmed in gold, its cup formed of deep red onyx covered in a layer of alabaster cameos depicting scenes from the gospels, its edges glittering with emeralds and pearls, its cost had been staggering, it had been a princely gift from the king, one that Philippe had thought at the time must be a bribe of some kind. Even now, he wasn’t sure how or why the king had had such a thing made and given it to his cousin.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a hungry look on Pietro’s face, and he thought _of course._ Of course. That was why Raoul and Luchetto had wanted to work with Pietro. He wanted the damned thing, too. “Let me guess,” said Philippe. “You want to steal it while he’s on the road to Aquila.”

“It’s the perfect time,” Raoul said in his most persuasive voice. “Louis can have as many guards as he likes, there’s only so much you can protect something like that in a carriage. Especially when a mouse is there to upset the horses and creep into the wagons. We could live like kings on it, Philippe. It’s the job to end all jobs—you could retire having escaped from Aquila, helped kill one bishop, and helped rob another of the greatest treasure in the world.”

To say that the idea didn’t appeal _a bit_ to Philippe’s pride would have been a lie—he had always loved a good story, and what a story robbing Louis of Dreux would make. But he would never be able to face Isabeau and Navarre afterward, and the thought of their disappointment was more than enough to dissuade Philippe, even putting aside the fact that working with Raoul and Luchetto and letting Pietro turn him into a mouse would be the stupidest decision ever made by a rational human being. “Assuming we _lived_ ,” he snapped. “We’d be notorious, Raoul. We’d never be able to sell it, it’s too well-known, and it would bring everyone up to and including _the King of France_ down on our heads.” He let his voice get a little louder, hoping it was enough to disturb the neighbors without arousing Raoul’s suspicions. “Best of luck to you, but count me out.”

“Oh, give me a _little_ credit, Philippe,” said Raoul. “I’ve already lined up a buyer. And who’s better at vanishing into a crowd than you?”

Raoul’s flattering tone left Philippe cold. “You think I’ll fall for this again? You think I’m as stupid now as I was when I was seventeen, that I’ll let you talk me into another dangerous job?”

“You were never stupid, Philippe.” Raoul took a step closer. “You were the most gifted pickpocket I’d ever met—a natural. Only imagine how nice it would be, working together again! Surely you remember how it was, the three of us working together—oh, and good old Jacques Boulanger, if he were alive how he’d love this—”

Philippe couldn’t stand another second of this rosy nostalgia. “I remember you leaving me to get caught in the goldsmith’s workshop,” he said. “And when I finally managed to escape, I remember heading back to the inn to find that you’d all left.”

“Don’t tell me you’re still whinging about that.” Raoul laughed as if he found Philippe unbelievably young and foolish—this had been irritating when Philippe was a boy, but it was positively infuriating now. “I thought you understood. It’s a dangerous game we’re in, and every man’s got to look out for his own hide.”

Perhaps Philippe could have believed that once. But after seeing the selfless devotion with which Navarre and Isabeau had looked out for each other and stayed together without ever being able to talk to each other—the way Navarre had described a life alone for them both as a half-life, as if neither could fully exist without the other—the sheer, beautiful joy with which they had greeted each other when the curse was broken—Philippe could not believe that there was no more to life than protecting oneself, no matter who had to suffer for it. “I don’t agree,” he said, as firmly as he could. “And if you think I would ever trust you to watch my back again, you’re a bigger fool than I am.”

To this, Luchetto made a contemptuous noise like a snort. Raoul didn’t seem to be bothered. But then, Raoul never seemed to be particularly bothered. “I suppose I should have expected that,” he said.

“He’s always thought he was better than us,” Luchetto agreed. “Pious little prig.”

“You know of course we can’t just let you leave,” Raoul said, his voice conversational. Philippe found that he couldn’t look at the man’s neutral, pleasant face. Instead, his eyes were drawn to Raoul’s hands as he drew a knife out of his belt.

“Gentlemen,” Pietro interrupted. “Surely there’s no need for this to come to violence.”

Luchetto wheeled on the man, his face reminiscent of a snarling dog’s, and Raoul raised an eyebrow, his hand still on the knife. Philippe found himself frozen. But Pietro, who he supposed must have had ice water in place of blood, simply looked coolly back at them and said, “After all, we’ve been presented with an opportunity here. We don’t actually know yet whether the ritual will prove successful. Perhaps if he doesn’t wish to participate in your practical applications of the transformation spell, Monsieur Gaston might like to help me test the effectiveness of these materials you’ve brought me.”

“Ah,” said Raoul warmly, “clever man. I knew you were the right partner for this job.” Quicker than Philippe could quite follow, the hand with the knife darted out toward him, hilt first, and a painful darkness descended.

When he regained some awareness, he wasn’t certain how much time had passed, but it couldn’t have been so very long, as no light escaped around the shutters of the little chamber’s window. Philippe had been bound hand and foot and gagged and apparently dragged over behind the bed, perhaps so that he wouldn’t be visible if someone should open the door. A throbbing pain pounded around Philippe’s head, seemingly centered in a spot above his left ear, and he could feel crusted blood in his hair and on his face. Raoul had obviously hit him with the butt of the dagger. A foul-tasting rag had been thrust into his mouth as a gag.

The situation didn’t look terribly promising. Philippe wasn’t enthused about the prospect of going out a second-floor window tied like a hunter’s trapped quarry. If he made it out without breaking every bone in his body, he still had to contend with the ropes and the fact that his head felt as if it would burst like an overripe fruit.

But he did have one advantage—Pietro, Raoul, and Luchetto weren’t looking at him. The three men were gathered around a small table in the corner of the room behind the chimney. Pietro was carefully adding ingredients to a little bubbling pot he was heating over a lit candle, and Raoul and Luchetto were watching with mild interest (Raoul) and grim impatience (Luchetto).

 _How_ , _Lord_? Philippe wondered. _I feel quite certain that many men make it through their lives without encountering_ one _wicked sorcerer—how can it be fair for_ two _of them to take such a cruel interest in me? I don’t mean to complain, but it does seem like rather a lot_. And yet, as old Bertram would have said, God helped them who helped themselves. Philippe had been laid on his side, but he carefully rolled himself onto his front and pushed onto his knees so that he could quietly inch toward the window.

Perhaps he would have made it if the innkeeper had taken greater care with his floors. But as he slowly crawled past the edge of the bed, a loose board creaked, and Raoul’s head darted around. He smiled, and Philippe heartily cursed his luck and rued the day he had ever met Raoul, son of Fulk the butcher. “Leaving so soon?” asked Raoul.

“I’m glad he’s awake,” said Pietro briskly. “He’s going to need to drink this, and pouring it down an unconscious man’s throat runs too high a risk of wasting it.” He muttered a few words in a tongue Philippe didn’t know, peered into his sorcerer’s potion and, apparently satisfied with what he saw, straightened up again. “It’s finished.”

“You’re just in time, then, Mouse,” Raoul said. “Luchetto?”

Philippe would have liked to be able to say that he put up some sort of resistance—even if he never saw Etienne de Navarre again, he would have wanted the man to be told that Philippe died fighting bravely. But the truth was that he made one frantic wriggle toward the window before Luchetto pounced, pinning Philippe’s elbows together behind his back and shoving him over toward Raoul and Pietro.

Pietro held his steaming pot out in front of him and said, “From my understanding of the structure of the spell, the precise shape into which the subject is transformed is shaped by the wishes of the caster rather than specifically tied to the serum ingredients. I don’t suppose you have any preferences for Monsieur Gaston here?”

“That’s easy enough,” said Raoul with his usual cheerful ease. “Philippe here has long been known in Aquila and Pordenone as the Mouse—why not see how he looks as an actual mouse?”

“Should be easy enough,” Pietro agreed, as if Raoul had proposed eggs for breakfast rather than stealing Philippe’s life away with magic. “Can’t promise I can turn him back yet, but I gather that won’t be such a loss.”

 _Oh, God, if you have any miracles standing by, now would be the time. Please, please, please._ Images of Isabeau and Navarre’s torment flashed before his eyes—the strange unnatural transformation of their bodies, the way it had cut them off from the world and from each other—and Philippe regretted heartily that he hadn’t accepted their invitation to Touraine. The thought that he would never see them again, and that they would never even know what happened to him, made a pit of grief open in his heart. What a fool he had been, not to accept what he was given.

Luchetto pulled the gag from his mouth and held his face tightly, the other man’s fingers digging into his jaw in an effort to pry his mouth open as Pietro brought the little pot closer to his face.

“Hold him still,” Pietro said sharply. “If this potion is spilled, it’ll be months before I can gather the ingredients for another.”

“You always did have to make things difficult,” Raoul said, sounding like a fond father scolding a child. Philippe hated him with a fierceness he had hitherto reserved for the Bishop.

As Luchetto kept hold of Philippe’s head, Raoul reached out to pinch his nose. It didn’t take a wise scholar to discern his plan—after what felt like a long resistance but was probably only a minute, if that, Philippe felt his lungs burning for want of air. If he could hold on just a bit longer—make a little noise and attract the attention of other patrons of the inn—loosen Luchetto’s grasp on his face—

Philippe suddenly saw with crystal clarity that he was not going to get out of this one. There would be no last-minute miracle, no Navarre riding up with his crossbow or Isabeau materializing out of the night to drive these beasts away. He didn’t know how much of himself he would remember as a mouse, and he wished desperately that he had had the boldness to ask Isabeau and Navarre about it in more detail, or press Imperius for more information. Perhaps if he retained the wits of a man, he could find some way to reach them.

But then, his wits had failed him badly this time, and how could a mouse make it from Lanzada to Lorraine, even a mouse with the wits of a man? Ah, well. He hoped, at least, that they would remember him fondly.

 _Send them my love, Lord_ , thought Philippe as spots danced before his eyes and he finally gave in and opened his mouth. He was too dizzy and frightened to taste what they poured down his throat, or to understand what it was Pietro was chanting. His mind was far away. _Bid farewell to Navarre and Isabeau for me, and let them know that if I could have seen them again, I would. I know I’ve been a weak and foolish man, Lord, a thief and a liar and a coward, but if I’ve ever done anything you looked favorably on, do me this one last favor, Lord._

_Send them my love._


	2. You will know it, but your way there will be filled with difficulties and dangerous passages

Isabeau woke with a sharp start, her heart racing. Beside her in bed, her husband had sat up just as quickly. The room was just beginning to lighten with the first touches of dawn, soft shadows stretching across the peaceful bedchamber as pinkish light flowed through the window, but Isabeau felt like a bird fleeing the hunter. Her limbs were bathed in cold sweat. “Philippe,” she said. “My dream—something happened to him in my dream.”

Some might have thought Navarre’s blue gaze harsh, but as he fixed it upon her face, Isabeau saw her own wild fear and confusion reflected in his eyes. “I dreamed of him, too,” he said. “I cannot say much more than that, but it was as if—it was as if he were frightened.”

Isabeau, in the time before, had never been the sort to put much stock in things like dreams or omens. But she knew more than most now of the strange mystical forces that underlay the earthly world, and she had learned to trust her instincts when a coincidence seemed like more than a coincidence. “He’s in trouble,” she said.

Navarre nodded slowly. “I think so.”

“Imperius.” Isabeau pulled back the coverlet, swiftly swinging her legs over the side of the bed and reaching for the gown she’d laid out the night before over the stool in the corner. “We’ll ask Imperius.”

“He might not be awake at this hour,” pointed out Navarre, though he himself had also shifted his legs out from under the covers.

“Then he’ll just have to wake up,” said Isabeau. The goddamned dress hadn’t been entirely unlaced up the back, and wrestling herself into it was taking too long for her liking. “What’s the alternative? You want to wait around, and discover later that we could have done something to help Philippe but we _didn’t_?”

“No,” said Navarre in a low voice. “You know I would never forgive myself if anything happened to him.”

She did know—Navarre might hide it as well as he liked, but she knew him, and she knew that he loved Philippe as well as she did. She knew that the idea of Philippe going hungry and cold, or being taken in for stealing again and—God forbid—hanging for it haunted her husband as it haunted her.

It ate at Navarre that Philippe had not accompanied them to the lands Isabeau’s father had left her, and it ate even more at him that Philippe could have left because of what Navarre himself had said and done in their time together. Navarre was hardly a snob—many of his dearest friends from his days in the Guard had been of humble birth, and he'd never been boastful about his own status as the younger son of a baron, which had frankly not gotten him very far in life. Philippe, though, would have no way of knowing that, not based on the men’s own, too-brief acquaintance. Many was the night that Navarre had asked her whether he had been too gruff with Philippe, or given the impression that he would not welcome him in their household.

Well. Whatever the trouble was, thought Isabeau grimly, if they managed to find Philippe safe and sound, she would not let any of them wonder anymore. She wouldn’t let Philippe leave them again, or Navarre retreat into his own stoic shell, before everyone had bared their thoughts and their hearts to each other.

Her fingers trembled as she laced the dress up. She was so frustrated she could spit—what nonsense was this? Would this dress never stop fighting her?

She stilled as Navarre curled his own warm fingers around hers. “He’ll be all right, my love,” he said quietly.

“How do you know?” For so young a man, Philippe had been through so much—and that was only in the short time Isabeau had known him. He was clever and pragmatic and good at getting out of scrapes. And yet he was alone in a world that could be cruelly unkind, and Isabeau could imagine all manner of torments that the fearful dream had concealed from her.

One shoulder twitched in a half-shrug. “I choose to believe that we wouldn’t be sent such a dream if there were nothing we could do to alter his fate.”

Isabeau took a deep breath, taking in strength from her husband's calm confidence. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. We’ve altered our fates before, we’ll do it now.”

A thin smile curved Navarre’s mouth. “There’s my fierce one. Whatever dangers Philippe faces won’t dare to stand against you.”

She flicked his shoulder with one finger as punishment for his teasing and then rested her head against it as Navarre finished lacing up her dress for her.

“I’ll wake Guillaume and have him saddle Goliath and Thessala,” he said when he’d finished. “You find some good wine for us to bribe Imperius with.”

Some half an hour later, the revolving constellations of the heavens saw them riding over the mile or so of road between the main gates of the keep and Imperius’s cottage. The man still found himself disinclined to be surrounded by what he called the noise and fuss of living around other people, but he’d been happy enough to accept a place on their land, and Isabeau and Navarre had signed a charter granting him the cabin for the rest of his life, grateful to be able to offer security to the man who had helped save them. He’d dragged with him assorted books and magical paraphernalia from his decrepit castle, but the most valuable treasure he brought with him was his mind, full of arcane knowledge that Isabeau could only catch occasional glimpses of between his raucous complaints about young people and his sentimental pleasure at seeing her and Navarre happy.

She hoped that he would have the knowledge that they needed this time.

As they rode up to his cottage, Isabeau dismounted quickly with nothing more than a quick whispered instruction to Thessala—the palfrey was as clever as she was docile, and needed no restraint to be kept from wandering off.

She could hear Navarre dismounting and seeing to Goliath as she dashed through the clear night, but she didn’t stop until she got to the cottage. Pounding on the door, she called, “Imperius! It’s Isabeau and Navarre! We need your help!”

The only answer was a familiar irritated groan, so Isabeau tried again. “Philippe’s in danger! We think it’s to do with magic—wake up!”

“Who? What?” Imperius growled from within. “Go away, whoever you are!”

By this point, Navarre had reached the door as well. “Wake up, old man!” he bellowed. His voice carried more than Isabeau’s, and she could feel it ringing throughout the quiet night. “We need your help with Philippe!”

Isabeau could hear movement from within the cottage now, loud stomping and grumbling, before the door swung open to reveal Imperius, dressed as always in a shapeless robe and his unshaven whiskers, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Isabeau?” he asked, squinting as if he wasn’t sure he was looking at. “Etienne? What’s all this about Philippe?”

“We’re sorry to wake you,” said Isabeau, “but we think he’s in trouble.” She explained their dreams as Imperius ushered them into the small cottage. There wasn’t much to tell, and Imperius had barely had time to stoke his fire into a low orange glow before Isabeau fell silent, having told it all.

He sat on a low stool by the fire, staring into it. “Mother of God,” he said, as if to himself. To Isabeau and Navarre, he said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“We’re not imagining things,” said Navarre sharply. “Surely it must mean something, that we both dreamed it at the same time.”

“I believe it must. The question is, just _what_ does it mean? You’re sure you can tell me nothing more about where he was in the dream, or what was happening to him?”

Isabeau couldn’t help but look at Navarre’s face, and he clearly had the same idea, because he met her eyes ruefully. “The light was dim in the dream,” Navarre answered for both of them. “Philippe was there. Not alone. He was frightened and I could feel…” He swallowed. “It was as if he were saying good-bye.”

“I see,” said Imperius, looking grave. “Well. Just as the Pharaoh was sent a message for David to interpret, or Nebuchadnezzar a dream that only Daniel could understand, I believe you two have been sent a message, and we must understand and act on it.” He stood up abruptly and went over to rummage through a wooden chest in the corner. Isabeau could hear bits of muttering—“No, no, that won’t help,” or “Where’s the damn—oh, here.”

He returned after a moment bringing with him a small stack of books. “Here,” he said, handing Isabeau and Navarre each a book. “Help me search.”

“What are we searching _for_?” asked Navarre, already opening the book on his lap.

“We need more information,” said Imperius firmly. “Look for divination spells, or those that will let us see or hear hidden things.”

The conditions were not the best for reading—though the night was stretching on toward morning, it was dark inside the cottage, with the dim orange glow of the fire scarcely enough to see by. The book that Imperius had handed Isabeau was in Latin, a language she was not terribly expert in, and the handwriting was so messy that she might have had difficulty even if it had been in the langue d’oïl or Lombard or some other tongue she knew better. And yet Philippe’s life might depend on her making out these scribbled Latin words, and so she applied herself to them as she had never focused on a book in her life.

She was so focused, in fact, that when she found what she had been looking for, she didn’t notice at first, instead trying to work out from context what an unfamiliar abbreviation meant. But when she went back to the beginning of the sentence to remind herself what it was about, she stopped as soon as she understood, urgency pressing in once more around her as her pulse quickened. “Imperius?” she said. “I believe this spell is called “the mirror of truth”—do you think it will be useful!”

Imperius unceremoniously grabbed the book from her lap and pored over it with an intensity she was unused to seeing from him, mouthing the words as he read. “My God, Isabeau,” he said when he was done. “Yes, this will do! This will do very nicely indeed!”

“What does it do?” asked Navarre, frowning.

Imperius ignored him for a moment, having returned to his trunk to look for something else, but after discarding a few apparently useless objects, he emerged holding a mirror, perhaps the size of two hands placed side-by-side, in a plain, uncarved wooden case. “It will make _this_ ”—here he brandished the mirror in Navarre’s direction—"into a window to wherever it is Philippe is. Do you have anything of his?”

As far as Isabeau knew, Philippe owned nothing but the clothing on his back and the money she and Navarre had given him, and he had probably stolen the first. “No,” she said, fear making her voice sharp. “Does it matter?”

“Eh,” said Imperius dismissively. “I think not. A connection to him is needed, but since you two have dreamed of him, it may be that we already have all the connection we need.”

“What must we do?” she asked.

“The point of this spell is to reveal hidden truths—to uncover what time or distance or deception has concealed. For it to work, we will need such things as bring clarity and light: fire and clean water.”

Navarre raised a skeptical brow. “That’s all?”

“No,” snapped Imperius. “Of course that’s not all. We’ll also need such herbs as I use to purify rotting wounds, but you won’t be able to find those in the dark, I’ll wager. _I_ will find those. I assume you can bring me the fire and water?” His tone implied that he was dubious about their ability to do so.

“You have fire,” Navarre pointed out, gesturing toward the hearth. Imperius snorted contemptuously.

“Won’t do. Too smoky. Besides, any fool knows for this kind of spell, you need a fire lit especially for the purpose.”

The curl of Navarre’s lip said that he took objection to the old man’s tone, but Isabeau reached to grasp his hand. Imperius tended toward bluster when under pressure, and Navarre toward stubbornness, but neither would help Philippe now. “We’ll get them, Imperius,” said Isabeau before pulling Etienne from the cottage.

The clean dawn air was like a shock of cool, moist openness after the stuffy warmth of the cottage, and Isabeau felt the part of her that the hawk had never left thrill at the freedom of it. It was so rare for her and Navarre to simply ride like this at night now, only the two of them, no need to be the lord and lady or anyone but themselves. But the pleasure of it passed in the blink of an eye—she was not free so long as Philippe was in danger. Love, she had long since learned, could be as confining as chains.

“Shall we split up?” asked Navarre. “You to the well and me back to the great hall for a torch—or the other way around?”

“Do you mean to say you cannot make a fire here?” Isabeau looked at him skeptically—he had no more been tamed than she had. “Surely we don’t need to ride all the way back to the castle. Imperius must get his water from the spring over the hill.”

He fixed her with a wry smile, with that edge of fierceness to it that still sent her heart a-flutter. “Do you have a flint?”

She retrieved hers from Thessala’s saddlebag, and he casually turned it over in his fingers. “All right,” he said. “I’ll make the fire. You get the water. Imperius has a bucket there.” He gestured toward the wall of the cottage.

Under other circumstances, they might have made a game of it, competing to see who could finish their task the faster, but the strangeness of the circumstances, the fear of whatever had happened to Philippe, the reentry of magic into their lives, unsettled Isabeau, her heart as inconstant as a choppy sea.

When she and Navarre reentered the cottage, their quarries obtained, Imperius was muttering over his mortar and pestle. He looked up only long enough to verify that they had brought him fire and fresh water before looking back at his work and beckoning them over. “Here, here,” he said distractedly. “Bring them here.”

They watched as he transferred his paste of herbs to a glass vessel into which he poured a bit of Isabeau’s water, agonizingly slowly. He then took the bit of brush Navarre had lit aflame and used it to light a tall candle, the yellowish color of beeswax, which gave off a pleasantly sweet smell as it warmed up. Murmuring something rhythmic in Latin, he held the vessel above the candle using what looked like a small pair of blacksmith’s tongs until the green liquid within began to bubble. When he was done with his chant, he dipped a rag into the mix and, holding the mirror in front of the candle, wiped it with the mixture.

Nothing happened—all Isabeau could see was the flickering candle and, in the background, herself and Navarre and Imperius’s hand.

“Did it work?” asked Navarre, his eyebrows drawing together. The morning spilled golden light over his face, its light at odds with his grim expression.

“Patience!” hushed Imperius.

Isabeau caught her husband’s eye and smiled reassuringly, but she herself wondered what they would do if the spell failed. Who could they turn to if Imperius could not help them?

“Ah!”

At Imperius’s exclamation, Isabeau looked back at the mirror, and her eyes widened. A kind of milky film had spread across it, but even as she watched, the film was dissipating to be replaced with darkness. Not the darkness of the dim cottage, morning light filtering in through its small windows, but a thicker, more total darkness, with no shapes visible, only a few glints of light like stray sparks.

“I don’t understand,” said Isabeau. “Are we seeing what Philippe is seeing?”

“I believe so,” said Imperius, looking troubled. “Perhaps he’s locked in a dark room, or has a bag over his head.”

As the darkness in the mirror took on further definition, Imperius’s hand slipped on the mirror, and he almost dropped it.

“What are you doing?” asked Navarre sharply.

“The mirror started _vibrating_ ,” Imperius grumbled.

Vibrating with _sound_. “Hush,” Isabeau snapped. “Listen.”

Sure enough, sound was emanating from the mirror, making its wooden case buzz against the surface of the table. Isabeau strained her ears for anything that could tell her where Philippe was. She could hear horses’ hooves—outdoors, then. Philippe himself wasn’t saying anything, but she could hear voices in the background. They weren’t so clear that she could understand what they were saying, but they sounded male, and the language sounded more Latinate than German. Southern, maybe, but Isabeau had grown up in Anjou, or visiting her cousins in Brittany and Maine and England, and her scant years in Aquila were not enough to help her tell the tongues of Toulouse or Marseille from those of Genoa or Turin. She cast a questioning glance at Navarre.

Catching her eye, he nodded, as if he had understood what she meant without speaking, and he frowned again, this time in concentration. “Provence,” he said finally. “Or maybe Languedoc.”

Just because the men speaking were from Provence or Languedoc didn’t mean that was where they still were, but it was _something_ , at least, a hint as to a location. “Philippe is a Gascon, isn’t he?”

“From Foix,” said Navarre. “He told us that’s where he was heading. It could be he was almost home when he was taken.” He gave Isabeau a troubled look. “I could send men, but I don’t know what I’d tell them to look for.”

“Or even where to go, really.”

“No. You know I’d send an army after anyone who’d wish Philippe harm, but…”

She knew. She knew that even people who’d known her since she was a girl were wary of lingering magic, as if it clung to her like a miasma in the aftermath of the bishop’s curse; she knew that precious few of even Navarre’s most trusted men would understand a rescue mission for a peasant thief, and that was assuming they would even know Philippe if they saw him; she knew that passionate, reckless love was for the young and unmarried or adulterous, and not for the happily married, stable lord and lady of a duchy.

She knew all of that. But it didn’t change what she and Navarre needed to do. “We’ll have to go ourselves,” she said. “Gautier can care for the lands in our absence, and you know his oldest, Little Gautier, is just champing the bit to be trusted with more responsibilities. We can make him his father’s deputy, and tell them both we’re going on pilgrimage.”

“Alone?” asked Navarre drily. “I hardly think he’ll approve.”

Isabeau shrugged. “He’s been disapproving of me and my choices since I was fourteen and wanted to learn how to use a sword. He’s used to it by now.”

“It’ll be like old times.” He took his hand in hers and gently stroked his thumb across her knuckles. “Just the two of us. And Goliath.”

“But I’ll have my own horse this time,” she pointed out. “And it’ll be the _three_ of us on the way back.”

“Well,” harrumphed Imperius. “If that’s all settled…” He handed Isabeau the mirror. “Take this. Now that I’ve performed the spell, it should keep on working—just say _monstra veritatem_ _de eo quem quaero_ , and think of Philippe, and you should be able to track him as you go.”

“ _Monstra veritatem de eo quem quaero_ ,” Isabeau repeated to herself, trying to memorize the words.

Imperius nodded. “If you need me to break another curse on him once you’ve found him, just bring him here. And…” He trailed off, his lips pressed together.

“And?” Navarre prompted.

“And watch yourselves. I’d just as soon not have to break another curse on you two.”

Isabeau felt warm fondness suffuse her limbs, and she could not help but embrace the old monk. “Thank you, my friend,” she said. “We’ll take care of ourselves, we promise.”

He harrumphed again and patted her on the back like he was comforting a fussy child, and she smiled at him as she pulled away. “Don’t worry,” she said to him. “Come what may, we’ll bring Philippe home.”

It was true, she promised herself. Philippe had been a stranger when he’d risked his life for the sake of Isabeau and Navarre. How could the two of them do less for a man who was their friend?

They would bring Philippe home. And God help anyone who got in their way.


	3. Such time was wont my thought of old to wander in the ways of love

The shifting landscape as they rode through Poitou toward Angoulême, heading steadily south, filled Navarre with a jarring feeling as if he had been there before. He had—of course he had, traveling with Isabeau after they were married to claim her inheritance, and before, as a young man seeking his fortune in the retinue of whatever lord would pay for his gear and the keeping of Goliath. But that was not what he thought of now. He thought of riding with Isabeau a light, feathered weight on his arm or circling above his head as Goliath’s hooves pounded the lonely roads. He thought of the dark, fierce creature inside of him, and the knowledge that as soon as the sun set, all the things that made him human would be stolen from him. He thought of the fear of the bishop and the burning desire for vengeance, twin goads that drove him forward, and the day the rumor reached him that a thief had escaped from the dungeons of Aquila.

He shot a glance at Isabeau, riding beside him on Thessala. Though she of course hadn’t had a horse of her own at the time, the sharp, hungry expression in her eyes told him that she was also remembering what it was like to be blown on the winds of love, changed through strange alchemical reactions into fear and rage.

Her eye caught his. The fierceness in her eyes receded by a hair’s breadth, and she gave him a rueful smile. “It’s like the good old days, isn’t it? Just you and me, hunting for Philippe.”

“He always had a trick up his sleeve, that one.” It had been equal parts amusing and infuriating when Philippe was nothing more than a strange pickpocket who talked to himself and wheedled Navarre with a troubadour’s slick smoothness, a skinny youth with a nervous smile on whom Navarre had pinned his hopes of vengeance. Now it gave Navarre comfort, to think that if there were any chance of escape from his situation, whatever it was, Philippe would find it.

“He did,” agreed Isabeau. “Definitely the kind to use whatever tools he has at hand.” Her smile slipped as she gazed out toward the horizon. “Navarre,” she began, and he blinked—she hadn’t called him that in ages, not since they’d settled in as the lord and lady of Touraine. He was struck again by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

“Yes?”

“Why do you think we dreamt of Philippe?” Her smooth brow wrinkled in thought. “I’ve been thinking about it since we left. You don’t think that we somehow….”

He hadn’t seen her eyes so troubled in years, since they’d first realized that the Archbishop would not let anyone but himself enjoy Isabeau’s favor. He didn’t like it. “Somehow what?” he said, more gruffly than he’d meant to.

She didn’t seem to notice. “Tangled him in our curse?” Her eyes shifted back to Navarre. “He saw us transform—I think he’s the only one to have seen us both change at once. He was there when the curse was broken. I don’t pretend to understand how such things work, but do you think the magic might have somehow trapped him, the way that we were trapped?”

Navarre heaved a deep breath and thought about the question, feeling the reassuring warmth and power of Goliath’s strong body underneath him and steadying himself in the meditative rhythm of the hoofbeats. He’d have liked to dismiss the idea, but he couldn’t claim any more expertise than Isabeau—they had only ever been the victims of such forces, not their masters. “I think that if magic binds the three of us,” he said finally, “it isn’t the same as the bishop’s curse. Philippe was with us longer than a day and a night after the curse was broken, and I saw no signs that he was affected.”

Magically, anyway—emotionally, he had been so overwhelmed by happiness at the curse breaking that he’d been fighting back tears during the only conversation the three of them and Imperius had had about the subject. Navarre had been touched by Philippe’s obviously deep feeling, all his frustration at the man’s impudence and stubbornness transformed to fondness by Navarre’s own deep wells of relief and joy.

“That’s true,” Isabeau acknowledged. “And if the dreams help us to find him, they’re more of a blessing than a curse. Do you suppose it means anything, though?”

“Means anything? Like what?”

“I don’t know. That perhaps we were affected more permanently by the curse than we thought? That we’ll always have the touch of magic on us?”

What a strange possibility to consider. Before all—all _this_ —Navarre would have said he was the last man on earth to have some kind of lasting companionship with magical forces.

“Maybe you’re thinking of it from the wrong angle,” he suggested. “Maybe it’s not the magic that will always be a part of our lives, but Philippe.”

“Oh, Etienne.” Finally a smile played at the corners of Isabeau’s lips, a beautiful smile that brightened her face with affectionate amusement. “You soft-hearted man.”

She was probably the only one ever to accuse him of soft-heartedness—but then, it was she who had awoken depths of soft and passionate and loving feelings within him, depths he had never known he contained before the first time he looked upon her face. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said, his heart warming as she laughed.

They had precious little to laugh about over the following weeks, though. They were making good time—their steward’s handwringing aside, they could travel far faster without an entourage, often making upwards of twenty miles a day. And yet it was not a short journey to Rimont, far closer to Navarre than to Tours, and every day that passed was a day that Philippe could meet with a harm from which they could not rescue him. The mirror offered scant help—it worked, apparently, the words Imperius had taught them continued to turn the mirror into a window into where Philippe presumably was. But where Philippe presumably was was dark and featureless, with no visible or audible indications of his location. Sometimes they could hear muffled voices in the background, but they could seldom make out what the voices were actually saying, and they’d never heard anyone address Philippe directly. It was as if someone had thrown him into a sack and forgotten about him.

By the time they reached the Abbaye de Combelongue, neither of them was in a particularly patient mood. They bore it as best they could as Monsieur l’Abbé, a skinny little man with a face like he’d eaten something sour, bustled around to fetch them something to eat from the kitchens and two glasses of the wine the abbey produced. Perhaps Imperius would have appreciated such hospitality, thought Navarre wryly, but Isabeau and Navarre were disinclined to comment on the vintage of grapes or the healthful properties of the blend of herbs and spices the monks added.

Nor were they encouraged by the abbot’s response to their initial request for any information about Philippe Gaston. The man’s sour face grew even sourer, and he said with a reedy sharpness like a cold wind, “We haven’t seen hide or hair of Philippe Gaston in years—we assure you, milord, milady, if he has stolen something from you, we have no knowledge of its whereabouts.”

“You misunderstand,” said Isabeau, her pleasant smile barely covering her rising temper. “Philippe hasn’t stolen anything from us. He’s a dear friend, and we’re concerned about his well-being.”

The abbot’s eyebrows rose. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand?” demanded Navarre, trying to keep his own temper under wraps. He understood the strangeness of the situation—the Navarre of five years ago would certainly have been baffled by such a request for information about a wanted thief—and surely the abbot was being perfectly honest in his ignorance about Philippe’s whereabouts. They had always known there was a good chance that whatever happened to Philippe had happened before he made it home.

“How such distinguished persons as yourselves can be—and I pray you will pardon me for saying it—so deceived in that fiend’s character as to call him a friend.”

Navarre gritted his teeth and felt his grip on his temper slip ever-so-slightly. “Mind what you say about him,” he cautioned.

Isabeau’s eyes darted over to Navarre’s and she reached a hand out to grasp his own, her slender fingers squeezing his. “Pardon my husband,” she said, and Navarre marveled that the man could not hear the irritation under her sweet voice. “We understand that Philippe must have kept the brothers here very busy. But he has done us a _great_ service, and we thought that we might repay him by perhaps sponsoring a chapel, or endowing a chapter of canons here in the place where he was raised, where he told us he planned to return to rededicate himself to God.”

At the mention of a possible donation, the abbot brightened, but when Isabeau reached the end of her little speech, he let out a mocking laugh that grated on Navarre’s nerves. “Of course we would be most thankful for any charity with which the Lord inspired you, milady,” he said, disapproval knit in the harsh angle of his brows. “But it is _highly_ unlikely that Philippe Gaston ever had any intention of returning here.”

“Really?” asked Isabeau coolly. “Because he told us that that was where he planned to go, and we have found him quite reliable in matters of importance.”

“Reliable?” The abbot let out a disbelieving snort. “Have you never heard of a notorious thief called ‘the Mouse,’ milady? Milord? It is the name Philippe Gaston is most known by these days.”

“You tell us nothing we don’t already know,” said Navarre, knowing that anger was apparent in his voice but not interested in reining it in any longer. “Those days are behind him. I always thought that the prodigal son was to be welcomed home.”

The abbot shook his head. “Milord, your kindness does you credit. But if you know that Gaston was raised here, then surely you know that he was a cuckoo stealing his way into a sparrow’s nest—despite our best efforts, the boy was naturally inclined toward deception and thievery. The influence of his mother, no doubt; she was no better than she should be, and all the good teaching in the world cannot bend an inherently wicked nature.”

Navarre had heard enough. But before he could tell Abbot Denis where to shove his self-righteousness, Isabeau was already standing, a thunderstorm contained in the body of a woman. “Father Abbot,” she said, “Philippe Gaston is as inherently wicked as you are brave and selfless, which is to say not at all. I praise God that he has not returned here to listen to your nonsense, and the next time you feel moved to pass moral judgment on anyone, I pray you will go boil your head instead.” Wrapping herself once again in her traveling cloak, she swept out of the room without a backward glance.

Navarre allowed himself a grim smile at the stunned abbot before striding out of the room to follow his wife. He found her, still breathing hard with anger, standing against the brick wall of the abbey.

As he leaned against the wall beside her, she shot him a glance and shook her head, anger tightening the lines of her face. “The _arrogance_ of the man!” she said. “All he needed to say was that he didn’t know where Philippe was, but instead he tells us about his mother’s morals?” She made a disgusted noise in her throat.

“At least we know one place he’s _not_ ,” said Navarre. It was a dim enough silver lining, but it was all they had to go on. And besides, Navarre found himself glad that their lively little mouse wasn’t cooped up in such a stifling place. “Can you imagine what it would have been like had Philippe returned?”

He had been putting himself in Philippe’s place, having to put up with that pompous windbag of an abbot, but a smile graced Isabeau’s lips and she said, “I imagine Philippe would have a great many quotes from the Bible and messages straight from the mouth of God to deliver to Father Denis,” and Navarre had to laugh.

“He would,” he agreed. “And either the monks would chase him out with torches after an hour or two of that, or we’d receive word that Philippe Gaston had been appointed the new Abbot of Combelongue.”

“Is that Philippe Gaston’s name I hear?”

Isabeau and Navarre exchanged a glance before looking at the man who had spoken. This was no monk, thought Navarre, though in build he was quite similar to Imperius. Almost completely bald, grinning at the two of them with a smile missing many teeth, he carried at his side a bowl, and at his other side, a crutch he leant on in place of his missing lower left leg. A beggar, then. “You know Philippe Gaston?” he asked.

The man’s toothless smile grew even wider. “Knew the boy quite well when he lived here.” He laughed. “Funny little fellow.”

Pushing herself off the wall, Isabeau approached the man, looking at him with an altogether more friendly expression than the polite one she’d tried on the abbot. “We’re friends of his,” she said. “I don’t suppose you can tell us anything that might help us find him?”

He blinked, and his smile faltered somewhat. “Oh, no, missy, I haven’t seen Philippe in….” He looked up, perhaps counting in his head. “Maybe eight years? He’d have been about fourteen or fifteen?” He shook his head. “A long time ago.”

“That’s all right,” said Isabeau. “Monsieur…what is your name?”

The man smiled again, surprised this time, as if he was unused to being asked his name. “Me? I’m old Bertram, everyone around here knows me.”

“Well, Monsieur Bertram, we’re not from around here,” Isabeau said, still looking at Bertram with friendly amusement. “My name is Isabeau of Anjou and Touraine, and this is my husband, Etienne of Navarre. If we were to buy you a meal at the nearest inn, or wherever you like, do you think you might tell us more about Philippe, and where he might go?” She pulled a coin from her pouch, and Bertram blinked, looking from the coin to her and back again.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Don’t know what I can tell you, but you have yourself a deal.”

The inn was a respectable enough affair, filled with craftsmen chattering in the langue d’oc and the savory smell of chicken roasting. Navarre’s practiced eye took in the room, seeking out pickpockets or shady characters whose backs went up at the entrance of a well-to-do man with a sword, but though the people of Rimont looked at him with curiosity, none seemed concerned to hide any criminal dealings—for that matter, none of them seemed to recognize him. And why should they? The affairs of the bishop of Aquila were probably of little interest here.

He nodded at the innkeeper with a smile and sat down at the table with Isabeau and Bertram, enjoying the pleasant sense of anonymity. How often had Navarre eaten in a place like this in Aquila, sharing a table with a party of guardsmen, back in the days before the bishop’s determined hatred? Sometimes it all felt like another lifetime, another Etienne de Navarre.

Bertram, as it turned out, was easy to please—with a thick slice of buttered bread and a freshly roasted leg of chicken in front of him, he was happy to give them all the information about Philippe he could remember.

Which, unfortunately, was more along the lines of nostalgic anecdotes than useful information—stories about young Philippe leaving his chores at the monastery undone to talk with the beggars in the streets. “Always telling stories, he was,” Bertram recalled. “Couldn’t keep him quiet—if he couldn’t find someone to talk to, he’d tell stories to himself.”

That, Navarre could well imagine.

“What kind of stories?” asked Isabeau, a soft smile on her face.

“All manner!” Bertram nodded. “Told me all manner of Bible stories of a Sunday morning. Stories he heard at the inn about King Arthur and the foreign wars and—pardon me for saying it, my lady, you know what kinds of stories men tell at inns—rude stuff you oughtn’t tell a lady.”

Isabeau’s smile turned wry. “I think I know what kinds of stories you mean, Bertram.”

He nodded and reapplied himself to his chicken leg before starting up again. “He didn’t mean any harm, the little lad, just repeating what he’d heard. Liked a good story, he did. Far-fetched stuff, too—how his parents were a foreign lord and lady and would come a riding up one day on their fine horses to take him home, and how one day he was going to be a fine knight like in the stories about King Arthur and rescue folks in distress, and all manner of things about true love and the like. Finding a noble lady to love and serve and write love songs for, that sort of nonsense. Heard tell of traveling minstrels, I suspect.”

It should have been a funny picture—young Philippe, who by all accounts had been an unwanted peasant child raised for service in the monastery, spouting tales of courtly love and fantasizing about being a knight or a troubadour—and Navarre could very easily picture it. But he couldn’t find the humor in it. Philippe had dreamed of a bigger and better life for himself, and seemed mostly to have found trouble and danger.

“So what happened?” he asked Bertram. “Why did he leave Rimont?”

Bertram shrugged. “Who can say, who can say. He was always riling up the monks, that’s for certain sure. Many’s the night he’d come and spend the evening with old Bertram and not go back to the abbey at all. And then one day he was gone. Far as anyone could tell, he sneaked himself into the wagon of a traveling merchant, and lickety-split, nobody ever saw him again. Heard tell he started stealing.” The expression of sententious sorrow on his as he shook his head was something he must have picked up from the monks. “Sad, sad. He was a good little lad.”

However true that was, it didn’t help Isabeau and Navarre find him now. After finishing their meal, they gave Bertram another handful of coins, for which he was extravagantly grateful, and retrieved their horses to head east. If Philippe hadn’t made it to Rimont, he might have been captured along the route from Aquila to Foix. If not, there was always Aquila, where Navarre still remembered many of the leaders of the criminal underworld, one of whom he hoped might remember Philippe or any of his associates.

They’d been riding for most of the afternoon, the sun hovering low above the horizon, when Isabeau turned to Navarre and said, “When we find him”—the stress she put on the _when_ said that there would be no other outcome—"if Philippe is still inclined to wax romantic and write love songs and tell courtly stories, he can write all the poetry he wants. If he wants to write love songs to _me_ , I’ll read them with a smile, and in fact, if he doesn’t know how, I’ll teach him to read and write just so that he can write all the love songs and romances he wants, and _nobody_ is going to discourage him.”

She talked as if she thought Navarre might object, and he understood why. But after what the three of them had been through—after seeing how his own stubborn resentment and foolish jealousy had threatened to keep them trapped as a wolf and a hawk forever, and how Philippe with his clever tongue and forthright courage and loyal affection had helped them break the curse—Navarre knew better than to think that any man could threaten what he and Isabeau had, much less Philippe Gaston. “If anyone deserves love poetry,” he said, “it’s you, Ladyhawke.”

She laughed at that, and Navarre was the happiest man in the world. What greater treasure was there than to have made Isabeau of Anjou smile?

Thinking of how she would smile when they found Philippe, Navarre urged Goliath on as they rode east, the setting sun throwing blood-red light and dark shadows across their path. Ahead of them the night sky was clear and full of bright stars beckoning them onward.


	4. Here's one joy that outjoys all the rest

Isabeau was well-versed enough in fruitless journeying not to let her spirits sink—despair had been worse than useless when she and Navarre had ridden the countryside seeking to break the curse and escape the bishop’s wrath, and it would not help them find Philippe now. But as they sought an inn in the bustling city of Grenoble, almost a month since they had left Tours, she was finding it difficult to remain optimistic. Philippe was alive, at least—supposing that they were reading the mirror’s messages correctly—but it was no simple thing to find a single man traveling alone between Aquila and the county of Foix, like searching for a needle in a haystack. With every day that passed, Isabeau worried that their luck would run out, and whoever had captured Philippe would weary of the trouble of keeping him captive and decide to do away with him.

As if he had read her thoughts, Navarre reached across the table they had claimed at the back of the inn’s main hall and grasped her hand. She smiled gratefully at him, feeling once again the sensation of _centeredness_ she had first felt when meeting him for the first time—the sense that she had found the man who would be her rock, her shield, her comfort and joy for the rest of her life. Of course he knew the worries in her heart, because they were mirrored in his own.

“The trouble,” said Isabeau inanely, not bothering to explain herself, “is that we have no way of knowing how far he got—of course walking on foot from Aquila he wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Foix, but if he stole onto a wagon again, or used the money we gave him to buy a horse—”

“I know,” said Navarre calmly, because of course he did—they’d been over this a hundred times.

“We should never have let him go.” This was also something they’d been over a hundred times.

“You know as well as I do that we could never have kept him somewhere he didn’t wish to be.” He turned over her hand to trace patterns on her palm with his thumb, soothing. “But we can take heart from that. If not even the dungeons of Aquila could hold the Mouse, no one can. And if and when he escapes from whoever has him now, we’ll hear about it.” He gave her a small smile. “Knowing Philippe, he’ll be bragging about it in taverns from here to Rome.”

“You’re right.” She swallowed and looked around the inn again. They’d made a few discreet inquiries, as they did at every stop along the way. The customers at this inn included traveling merchants from Venice and Padua, pilgrims from Lyon and Besançon, mercenaries from as far away as Wales, but none of them had seen Philippe. The innkeeper had no more information than his patrons, but given how chatty the man was, if word reached Grenoble of Philippe while they were here, Isabeau and Navarre would hear about it. She let out a deep breath, then inhaled and repeated the process until she’d calmed the rapid beat of her heart. “Of course you’re right.”

Though the noise of the inn showed no signs of dying down, she and Navarre went to bed after they were finished eating—days filled with nothing but riding and searching and consulting the mirror left both of them exhausted in body and mind. Because the inn was so crowded, the little room the proprietor had found for them was hardly of the caliber that would typically be offered to a comtesse, much to the innkeeper’s distress. Isabeau, who’d slept in dirty stables and tents and on tree branches with her head tucked into the ruffled feathers on her back, didn’t give a shit. The little room with its small, straw-stuffed mattress and square window looking out onto the busy street, was warm and dry, and Isabeau certainly didn’t mind curling into the welcoming curve of her husband’s body as they gave up their search for another day and surrendered themselves to sleep.

To Isabeau’s surprise, when next she opened her eyes, it was still dark out. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim of the room and tried to discern what it was that had woken her up.

If she had dreamed, she didn’t remember it now. Navarre was still beside her, his features relaxed in sleep and softened by the faint, silvery light that filtered into the room, uneven as clouds moved across the sky. It was raining outside—she could hear the gentle patter on the thatch of the roof—but while such a noise might have woken her a few months ago, on a night when she was trying to catch a few hours of sleep in an unattended haystack or a seldom-used corner of a stable, she didn’t think it was what had woken her now.

From the small table in the corner came a soft scratching sound, followed by a quiet, high-pitched animal sound, and Isabeau sighed. Though she no longer had a hawk’s eyes, her vision had always been sharp, and, as her eyes adjusted to the low light, she could make out the shape of a mouse on the table.

In the morning, she’d have to tell the innkeeper that he had a bit of a rodent problem. For now, she lay her head back down and let the quiet murmur of the rain lull her back to sleep.

When she woke again, Navarre was sitting at the table, frowning into the mirror. She sat up in bed. “Navarre?” she asked.

He looked up from the mirror. “I’m doing something wrong,” he said.

Wrapping the bed’s thin blanket around herself, she stood and came over to the table. “What do you mean?”

He scowled. “It’s not working,” he said. “I thought I’d consult it before we rode out again today, just to see if it gives us any damned indication of what direction to go, but it’s just…a mirror. You try, maybe it’ll work for you.”

Isabeau sat down on the foot of the bed and took the mirror that Navarre handed to her, anxiety seizing her heart. She pushed it back down. What good would her nerves do? She took a deep breath and said, “ _Monstra veritatem de eo quem quaero_ ,” the words coming easily to her lips after so much repetition. She peered in the mirror.

It was just their bedroom, and her own face.

“ _Monstra veritatem de eo quem quaero_ ,” she repeated, louder this time, waiting for the mirror to cloud and something, _anything_ , that familiar frustrating darkness, to appear.

Nothing.

“God _damn_ it,” she cursed. “Do you think Imperius’s spell wore off?”

“Who knows?” Navarre’s voice was grim. “He’s not here to ask.” He met Isabeau’s eyes, and the bleakness in his eyes cast a cold chill over her heating temper.

No words needed to pass between them—Isabeau understood him perfectly. They couldn’t go back to Imperius for him to recast the spell. They’d lost enough time already without throwing away another month riding to Touraine and back. They knew no one else they would trust to cast magic, or even whom they could ask without rousing suspicion. The mirror hadn’t exactly been a beacon to Philippe’s location, but it had been _something_. It had been proof that Philippe was alive, a hint, no matter how vague, to go on, an open door between him and them. And now that door had closed.

“Oh, Navarre,” she said, unable to keep the tears from her voice. She’d gotten soft since the curse had broken, but she couldn’t help it. How could all this, the dreams and the magic and the searching, come to nothing?

“We won’t give up,” said Navarre fiercely. “Who needs a mirror? We know what it is to hunt. Someone somewhere will have heard something, and when I have their scent in my nose—whoever took Philippe…” He smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile, but it was one that had always filled Isabeau with fierce love and a powerful sense of safety. It was a smile that said that his enemies would rue the day that they had ever crossed Etienne de Navarre.

Isabeau felt herself grow harder and sharper in response, the hawk answering the growl of the wolf. “Of course we won’t give up,” she said. “We’ll _find_ him.”

From the bedpost came a squeak, and Navarre’s eyes shot to where a mouse—who knew, perhaps the same mouse from last night—had perched on the bed’s simple wooden frame.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Navarre muttered, before stalking over to the bed, flicking a threatening hand at the mouse. “Shoo! Shoo!” The mouse squeaked again before darting down the bedpost and vanishing under the bed, where presumably there was some hole that had let it into the room in the first place.

Isabeau supposed there was no point in lingering—they’d have to decide which way to ride without the mirror’s assistance, but they didn’t need to stay at the inn while making that decision. Bread and drippings would suffice as breakfast for the road. She’d need to get dressed first, though, and they’d have to pack away the few possessions they’d brought in with them. She reached for the mirror to put it back into the saddlebag, but as her eyes took it in, she stopped. “Navarre?”

He made an inquiring noise and looked up from where he’d been fastening his sword belt.

Isabeau nodded toward the mirror, which had gone black again, and he frowned and walked over to gaze at it. “Damned sorcery,” he said to himself, and then to Isabeau, “What do you make of it? Why is it working again?”

"Oh, who knows?" asked Isabeau irritably. "Perhaps it's to do with the movement of the stars and the moon, and they've shifted back into the proper alignment."

His mouth quirked in a humorless smile. "I suppose it's as good an explanation as any I can come up with." As he looked at the mirror, though, he frowned at it, and as Isabeau watched, his eyes grew large and frozen, as if he had seen in its depths a ghost. 

"Etienne?" she asked, caught between hope and fear. If he'd seen Philippe...

He bent to the floor, and she realized that he had something there rather than in the mirror. As he straightened, she felt her own blood freeze in her veins. "Is that--" she began.

"The jewel from my sword," said Navarre. "The one that I gave Philippe." He held it gingerly in his hand, as if he feared it would burn him.

A thousand thoughts crowded in her mind. Perhaps it had been left as a kind of proof that whoever had Philippe knew that Navarre and Isabeau were looking for him. Perhaps it had been stolen from Philippe, and the thief was here. Perhaps the innkeeper knew more than he had told them. Her blood pulsed fast and loud in her ears, and yet another possibility crossed her mind. She looked at the mirror, which as it so often did was emitting the normal, everyday sounds of people moving and talking. They were quiet now, as if, like the inn they were staying in, wherever Philippe was was waking up around him. “Perhaps it has nothing to do with the stars,” she said. “I'm no magician, but I'm starting to think it never stopped working in the first place.”

“But it…” He blinked, and Isabeau could see the moment he reached the same conclusion she had. “He’s _here_.” He put the jewel down on the table and looked around.

Their eyes met, and Isabeau felt a thrill of exhilaration run through her. That _had_ to be it, didn’t it? The mirror was meant to tell them where Philippe was, what he was seeing. And what Philippe had seen had been, for a few minutes when they woke up, this inn.

Specifically, this room.

Oh, God. “Navarre,” said Isabeau, feeling faint. “The mouse.”

His brows drew together. “The….”

She darted her eyes over to the bed, where the mouse had vanished, and Navarre followed her gaze. "He might have dropped it as a sign--a way to let us know who he was."

“No,” said Navarre, disbelief writ large on his features. “No, it can’t be. That’s impossible.”

“My love,” she said, taking his hand, “nothing about this is possible. You and I know what it is to live through impossible things."

“But _how_?” Navarre demanded. He stared at the jewel, as if it might hold the answers he sought. “The bishop is dead. Who would have the power to—to turn Philippe into a mouse? Who would _want_ to?”

“I don’t know.” The surety that had filled her with dread and hope only moments before was draining. In the growing light of the morning, magical curses felt more like a dream and less like something that might have happened to their friend. “I don’t…I don’t even know how we could tell if I’m right or not. Maybe….” Maybe she had jumped to a ridiculous conclusion. Maybe she had let all that time alone with Navarre, living on instinct with nothing but dark magic and fear to structure her days, warp her reason and understanding. Worse, maybe she hadn’t, maybe she was right and they had lost him, and Philippe would spend the rest of his days as a mouse.

She was still holding his hand, and he squeezed it. “We’ll stay here,” he said. “I’ll get whatever information I can get from the innkeeper, and if there are any magicians, or strange old priests, or traveling merchants selling saints’ bones and magical relics, we’ll find them out. And if someone’s holding Philippe somewhere in Grenoble without magic, well, we’ll find _them_ out, too.”

Right or not, the idea that Philippe was there in Grenoble had put fresh wind in their sails, and they set out on a mission.

Their fresh spirits, however, did not make the innkeeper any more knowledgeable and forthcoming. His deference had taken on an air of skepticism, as if he were wondering why a duke’s daughter and her husband were traveling alone and asking so many questions, and they excused themselves from the inn to make inquiries elsewhere.

The Italian merchants had heard of the spectacular fall of the Bishop of Aquila, but knew Philippe only by reputation as a thief and would not have known him by sight. Even a small bribe and an offer to buy a roll of richly colored gold and blue brocaded silk from the Venetian party revealed no valuable information; the leader of the party had heard tell of a physician from Salerno who’d bought a book of spells from a friend of a friend of a friend, but he couldn’t recall the man’s name, or whether he had actually been a physician or not, or whether it was a book of magic spells or a book about exotic marvels that he had bought, and of course none of that was of any use in finding Philippe.

The pilgrims were horrified by even the suggestion that they might know something about magic, and were unwilling to speak with Isabeau and Navarre after that, except for one particularly loud woman who wanted to tell them about a dream vision she had had of the saints, half a dozen of whom wanted to marry her. Isabeau’s patience had been tried to its breaking point by her, and Navarre’s face had shut down so completely by the time she managed to extricate them that she could practically see his temper escaping his tight grip on it.

The Welsh mercenaries heard them out but had nothing to tell them. Isabeau frankly wasn’t certain they understood more than one in every five or six words that she said—what small amount of French they had had a strong English flavor to it, and Isabeau herself had picked up more than a touch of southern and even Italian speech in the years since she’d gone to live with her cousin in Aquila.

Fanning out, they’d searched the city out more thoroughly, visiting its churches and inns and anywhere a traveler might visit, but it was no use—no one had heard tell of a traveler claiming magical skills, or of anything that would lead them to think someone was being held captive (or—and they’d had to phrase their questions about this very carefully—being turned into a mouse) in Grenoble.

Back at the inn, the innkeeper had hastened to assure them that he _did_ , in fact, have two cats to keep the inn clear of vermin, and Isabeau wanted to scream. Instead, she and Navarre went back to their little room to consult the mirror again.

The whole day had been a miserable exercise in failure, and Isabeau felt worse than a fool. She scarcely even noticed the room around her as they entered. At least they had the jewel, she thought--it was the first clue to Philippe's whereabouts they'd come across in all this time. It wasn't much. She was ready to sit down with Navarre and go over all the possibilities again, but she’d only taken a step across the threshold when he gripped her arm and hissed, “Isabeau! Look!”

There, on the table, the mouse from before was sniffing the mirror.

That would have been enough to set Isabeau’s heart jumping, but as they moved close enough to see the surface of the mirror, she could feel a thrill run through her, ecstatic and sickening all at once—their eyes showed them a mouse, but the mirror reflected a very familiar human face.

She couldn’t stop the trembling in her voice as she said, “Philippe!” It sounded more like a sob than a greeting. In the mirror, Philippe’s large dark eyes widened. The mouse turned slightly on the table and chattered, and Isabeau squeezed Navarre’s hand tightly as the mirror began to talk—for once, not the muttered, muffled speech of people conversing in the background, but the pensive, somewhat plaintive tones of Philippe talking to himself.

“Well, _really_ , Lord, I think it’s a little much to bring them here and not give me any way to talk with them. Really, I've done my part, you know! I mean, I’m grateful I managed to find them, don’t think I’m not, and of course it’s not for me to question Your divine plan—far from it—but if you were to ask me, I feel like this would be a _perfect_ time to turn me back into a man. After all they’ve already suffered, I think it’s downright cruel to make them keep looking for me like this. Honestly, I’ve learned my lesson, I’ll never be tempted to fall in with immoral characters ever again.”

“Depending on your definition of immoral, you may have already failed at that,” said Navarre with a broad grin, and the mouse—Philippe—quieted and turned around.

Mirror-Philippe’s mouth fell open in shock. “Did—did I just hear what I thought I heard?”

Isabeau felt a giddy laugh bubble up in her. A few quick steps brought her to the table, and though she thought it might frighten him for her to reach out to touch him, she couldn’t help herself from smiling at the little creature. “If you thought you heard Navarre talking to you, then yes, you did. You’ve led us on quite a chase, Philippe.”

Philippe froze for a moment, looking precariously balanced as he stood on his hind legs with his front paws together, then he burst into movement, running in circles while his reflection laughed incredulously. “Navarre! My lady! How did you—ah, I see, Lord, I see what you were getting at now, I beg your pardon for losing faith. But no—” The reflection frowned as the mouse dropped down onto all fours. “Bother, I’m still a mouse. I was hoping I might have miraculously transformed just then. How is it you understand me?"

“The mirror,” said Navarre, and he sat at the table, his smile uncomplicatedly happy. “Look! The spell was meant to show us the truth about you in the mirror, and it worked.” He gestured toward the mirror.

“Ah.” Philippe sniffed it, and then Navarre’s hand. “Well, that explains how I’m hearing my own voice, at least. I’m afraid mice don’t have very good eyesight—my reflection doesn’t look like much of anything to me at the moment.” He nudged Navarre’s finger with his nose and then said, “Wait, the spell? What spell? How did you get a magic mirror?”

“Imperius, of course. When we told him we’d dreamt about—about something dreadful happening to you, of course he was willing to help us find you.” Isabeau’s giddiness draining away, she dropped onto the bench next to Navarre. “Oh, Philippe. You don’t know how frightened we’ve been for you. It’s been weeks.”

“Well.” Philippe scurried across the table to Isabeau, peering at her with beady little eyes. “I do beg your pardon, I didn’t intend to cause you any trouble. Far from it. And it’s very good of you to come after me. Only…” Mirror-Philippe caught his lower lip with his teeth, and he looked over at Isabeau with an expression that was troubled and confused. “Why are you here? You said something about a dream?”

Navarre met Isabeau’s eyes over Philippe and the mirror. He’d lost that happy smile, Isabeau noted with a pang, but the smaller quirk of the mouth with which he gazed at her was welcome in its own way—it was the expression that said, _Let me carry this weight for you_ , not because he thought she was incapable of it but because he wanted to spare her further pain. To relearn that expression had been one of the great joys of her last few months.

To Philippe, Navarre said, “About a month ago, we both woke from a dream in which you were powerfully frightened. At the end of it, you bid us farewell. We couldn’t tell much more than that, but God knows we’ve dealt with enough magic to know that it meant something. Specifically, that you needed help.” Philippe frowned and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Navarre cut him off. “Before you say a thing, remember that we hold you very dear, and would be insulted if you said you expected us to leave you in danger alone.”

“Oh,” said Philippe, sounding surprised. It took him a moment to say more than that; he rubbed his front paws together, looking for all the world like a man wringing his hands. “I…I suppose I did bid you farewell, now that I think on it. I knew that, as good and noble as you are, you wouldn’t forget me. Not that I meant for you to come chasing after me, of course, but I did think I might make my way to you.”

“Did you?” Isabeau asked.

The mouse made a motion that looked like nodding. “Obviously I can’t get very far on my own like this, but—don’t misunderstand me, I’ve quite given up the pickpocketing life—I’ve got a lot of experience getting into others’ saddlebags, and it’s even easier when you’re small enough to fit into them. I overheard a few merchants who were travelling north and west, and they were, shall we say, kind enough to give me a ride.”

Isabeau thought of Bertram’s story about young Philippe sneaking his way out of Rimont in the back of a wagon, and laughed. She had retained so little of her human self as a hawk, only instinct and a bone-deep knowledge that Navarre was _hers_. She didn’t know how Philippe’s transformation had left his mind so untouched, but she was so grateful for it that it left her a little shaky—if Philippe had not remained so powerfully _himself_ , they would probably never have found him. "You took the jewel with you?" she asked.

"It wasn't very easy to fit in my mouth, let me tell you! But I thought I ought to have _some_ way to tell you who I was. I didn't know you'd have a magic mirror, of course, I thought I might, I don't know, use the jewel to prove that I was who I was and then try and find other signs to try and speak with you."

“And you would have done it, too,” said Navarre, his voice warm. “I ought to have known. Of course you’d come up with something, even as an actual mouse.”

Philippe shrugged modestly in the mirror, but Isabeau could see that he was pleased. “It seemed like the best option—I certainly couldn’t stay where I was.” Some of the light went out of his dark eyes then. One corner of his mouth twitched in a smile, but Isabeau had seen enough of Philippe’s smiles to know when they were covering fear.

“And where was that?” asked Navarre, who had clearly heard the hollowness in Philippe’s voice, too.

“No place I’m eager to return, I can tell you that much,” Philippe said frankly. Isabeau felt anger press in around the edges of her good mood, the relief and joy of their reunion collapsing.

Someone had done this to him. Someone who had undoubtedly drawn on the same infernal powers as the bishop, perhaps someone who knew of the bishop of Aquila’s wicked deeds and Philippe’s own entanglement in them. Was it an act of revenge? A way to punish Isabeau and Navarre for breaking the bishop’s power and killing him? The idea was intolerable. “What happened?” she said. Both Philippe the mouse and Philippe the reflection froze, and she realized that her voice had come out more harshly than she had meant it. Softening her tone, she said, “Please. Tell us, who did this to you?”

“I…” Philippe-the-reflection’s eyes darted from Isabeau to Navarre and back again, nervous. As if he feared their response. Perhaps he’d gone back to picking pockets, but Isabeau hoped to God that he knew that they would never condemn him for it.

“Philippe,” she said, “may I pick you up?”

Philippe’s dark eyebrows lowered at that in confusion, and he said, “Of course, my lady. If you want.”

She reached across the table to lift him gently with both hands, trying neither to squeeze him nor let him fall. He was warm, his tiny pulse beating rapidly against the finger she held against his chest so that his head peeked out above her folded hands. Some dimly remembered predator’s instinct awakened in her mind, and she shoved it away—she was no hawk any longer, and Philippe was not her prey. She stroked down the smooth fur of his back, and his eyes closed. She imagined it was exhausting to be a mouse. The world was full of dangers. But then, the world had never been particularly safe for Philippe as a man, either.

“You have nothing to fear now,” she said softly. “Whatever happens, whatever you tell us, we’ll keep you safe.”

He let out a deep breath—a warm and wet little puff of air in her hand, a loud sigh in the mirror--and said, “Well, I’m afraid this story makes me look like a terrible fool, but I suppose that’s no reason not to tell it.”

Philippe was a natural storyteller, a gifted liar, but Isabeau had never heard him tell a story like this. He wasn’t trying to wheedle or persuade, or even to cheer them up; this was the tale of his life, and every word had the resigned ring of truth.

She and Navarre sat quietly while he told them of the men he had met when he was a boy, who had welcomed him for his ability to slip into small spaces and vanish into crowds unseen, and who had taught him how to be a thief. How he’d grown to understand over time that these men he’d made his companions were dangerous, that whatever loyalty existed between thieves would always be cast aside in favor of profit. How he had paid the price for it, abandoned as he and his fellows robbed a goldsmith’s shop, arrested by the guards of Aquila. How he’d escaped by the skin of his teeth and struck out on his own on the streets of Aquila, seventeen years old and already making a name for himself as the Mouse, never to see his former friends again. Until a month ago, when they had come across him as he walked the many, many miles from Aquila to Rimont.

Isabeau felt tears prick at her eyes as he spoke, but she kept her grip on Philippe’s small body gentle as he told them about Pietro of Salerno, and the offer Pietro, Raoul, and Lucchetto had made him, and what they had done to him when he refused. Despite her tears, she felt rage in her heart. She had never believed she would hate someone the way she had hated the bishop of Aquila, but she found she had plenty of hate in her heart for a man who would prey on a lonely boy to make a thief of him, abandon him to jail or the gallows, and then pounce on him again years later to work dark magic on him. If ever she met Raoul, son of Fulk the Butcher, he would not walk away unscathed from the encounter.

“So there you have it, sir, my lady,” Philippe concluded. He looked down, evidently worn out. “I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble. If I’d known it would end like this, I’d have…well, I’d have done things a lot differently, let me tell you.”

“You could have come with us straightaway,” Isabeau said softly, not at all wanting to blame him but wishing against wish that he had traveled north with them to Touraine when they’d invited him. It was only a few months ago now, but it felt like a lifetime.

Mouse-Philippe bent his pointy face up, and Mirror-Philippe looked at the ceiling. “Yes,” he said. “I could have.”

She felt a strange coldness grip at her heart at the thought that staying with them, even for a little while, had been so unappealing to him. That their home and their love might feel like a cage to him. Navarre looked at Isabeau, and whatever he saw made his open face close into a practical, businesslike expression. “Nothing’s ended,” he said. “We’ve got a curse to break.”

“We’ll go to Imperius,” Isabeau proposed.

“Do you think he’ll know what to do?” asked Navarre. “Clearly whatever spell’s been cast on Philippe is something very different than ours.”

“Do you suppose we’ll have to wait for another eclipse of the sun?” asked Philippe. “I only ask because, well, I don’t exactly _know_ how long mice live, but perhaps time might be of the essence?” It was a tactful way of saying something that Isabeau had not let herself even think: that if it took as long to find a way to break his curse as it had for Isabeau and Navarre to break theirs, Philippe would not live long enough to see it broken.

She didn’t know how long mice lived, either, but that was largely because any mice she’d encountered had died before growing old. Every cat, owl, and angry, broom-wielding innkeeper would be a danger to Philippe as long as he was in this shape. The journey back to Touraine itself would be a month, and he was right, time was of the essence.

Leaning his elbows on the table, Navarre frowned thoughtfully at Philippe. “What about Pietro? He cast the spell, do you think he knows how to reverse it?”

Philippe’s whiskers twitched. “You know, now that you mention it I do think he said something about that, though I didn’t put much trust in it—I don’t think he’d ever cast such a spell before, and he certainly didn’t seem inclined to take it off of me.”

“Well, I don’t care very much about Pietro of Salerno’s inclinations,” Navarre said. “If we find him, I’m sure I can… _persuade_ him to change you back.”

And if Navarre couldn’t, Isabeau sure as hell would. “Surely a man like that would stick out like a sore thumb in a small town,” she said. “It’s only a matter of which direction to go in search of him.”

The idea of another round of riding from town to town searching might, under other circumstances, have been less than appealing, but Isabeau had the scent of prey in her nose, now—she couldn’t wait to get on the road from Grenoble and find this worm of a man.

“If I might…” In the mirror, Philippe raised a finger as if to raise a point.

Navarre looked at him. “Yes, Philippe?”

“Can you tell me whether the new bishop of Aquila has been elected yet?”

“The new bishop?” Isabeau frowned. She hadn’t been terribly interested in gossip from Rome as they traveled, more interested in word of Philippe, but it had been hard to avoid. “Yes,” she said. “It’s that pompous weasel Louis of Dreux. Why?”

“Well. One point I neglected to mention earlier, simply because I had rather a lot of other things on my mind, is that Raoul and Lucchetto had heard from someone that he would be elected, and that he would be taking the great chalice of Bonneval with him.”

Isabeau knew exactly what he was getting at, though she wished she didn’t.

“No,” said Navarre in disbelief. He’d clearly reached the same conclusion she had. “They didn’t want you to help them steal the great chalice.”

“I’m afraid they did.” Philippe gave them an apologetic smile. “They must have picked up some experience as highwaymen since last I saw them, because they wanted to attack the new bishop’s party on the road to Aquila. I suppose you would have heard if they’ve done that already?”

Navarre snorted. “Oh, we definitely would have heard if someone had attacked the new bishop and stolen the chalice.”

“Which means,” said Isabeau, excitement rising, “that we know exactly where Pietro, Raoul, and Luchetto will be.”

Navarre grinned savagely and completed the thought for her. “Wherever the new bishop is.”

“And...” said Philippe hesitantly. “Do you know where that is?”

The innkeeper had been full of news for them before. None of it had been news that they’d wanted, and Isabeau had only listened with half an ear, but she _certainly_ remembered this particularly exciting news item. “He passed through Grenoble a little over a week ago,” she said. “On the way to Aquila.”


	5. You in your own spring make your love your all

If they’d moved quickly in their search for Philippe, their pace now was breakneck; though the large escort party of the new bishop moved slowly, it had over a week’s head start. They rested at night—there was no sense in risking Goliath or Thessala by trying to ride in the dark—but from sunup to sundown they rode, all other concerns fading into the background as they sought the bishop and the thieves who even now were probably planning their ambush.

Navarre, who had sometimes felt out of place as the lord of Touraine, felt as if he were exactly in his element now—even before his single-minded quest for revenge against the prior bishop of Aquila, he’d hunted down many an outlaw as captain of the guard. The Isabeau that he had first met would, perhaps, not have been an obvious companion on such a hunting mission—the kind of civilized hawking that ladies of gentle birth indulged in would have been her kind of hunt in those days. But the Isabeau who was his wife was as tried and tested in the face of danger as any knight, and her determination to track down Pietro, Raoul, and Luchetto struck new sparks of love in Navarre’s heart every time he saw it.

For his part, Philippe made a rather odd traveling companion. Isabeau and Navarre couldn’t hold the mirror and ride at the same time, and so Philippe’s communications were limited to the occasional muffled exclamation from the saddlebag where the mirror was kept. The man—the mouse—himself alternated between riding in Navarre’s belt pouch and Isabeau’s, and Navarre didn’t think he’d ever been so aware of his belt pouch before. It was nothing like traveling with Philippe had been before. In his human form, Philippe had been verbose even when Navarre had managed to intimidate him into silence, his sighs and facial expressions expressing his complaints, curiosity, and judgment of what he saw as Navarre’s strangeness as clearly as his words. And yet, Navarre felt a powerful sensation of recognition. Philippe and Isabeau had switched places, but other than that, it might have been that strange, emotionally exhausting mission to Aquila to break the curse all those months ago.

Day by day, they gained on the bishop. Every town they stopped at provided the gossip they needed to locate the man and adjust their course, and the distance between them was shrinking. More often than not, though, they camped on the road, not wanting to waste a single minute of daylight in their quest.

Navarre didn’t mind. He had never needed a soft bed or a luxurious meal. He had Isabeau and Philippe beside him; his heart was content.

They’d found some limited shelter in a grove of ancient trees, their branches forming a leafy roof, and in the last town Isabeau had purchased some dried meat, beans, and an onion, which could be turned into soup easily enough.

“One of us makes the fire, one of us gets the water?” said Isabeau, her eyes bright. She thrived on the road, thought Navarre; though of course they had responsibilities to her people, they’d have to find more excuses for her to travel once they’d gotten back.

“Shall we draw lots to see who gets which?”

Isabeau smiled. “No need. I want to try the new flintstone I got in town. _You_ can get the water.” She handed him the small earthen cookpot from her saddle and set Philippe, who had crawled onto her shoulder, down on the little pile of saddlebags they’d made to mark their campsite. “And you, lazy bones?” she asked him. “Which of us would you like to help?”

He squeaked indignantly, and she laughed and got the mirror out of its bag. Though the woods were dark, enough moonlight streamed through the leaves to reveal Philippe’s familiar defensive frown in the mirror’s reflection. “I don’t know if you _realize_ this, my lady,” he said, “but it’s rather difficult to make a fire _or_ carry water when you haven’t any hands.”

“I know,” said Isabeau consolingly, but Philippe wasn’t done.

“And it’s not as if I didn’t gather wood and water and make the fire a _hundred_ times when we were traveling together before.”

Navarre laughed to think of it. “I think a hundred is perhaps an exaggeration.” He reached over to pick Philippe up. “Here, Monsieur Gaston, why not come with me to get the water?”

“All right,” said Philippe irritably. “But please take the mirror with you. I’d rather not have to communicate completely in—in _squeaks_ like a poor dumb beast.” Despite his annoyance, he made no move to jump from Navarre’s hand or crawl down his leg, instead scurrying up to sit on his shoulder.

Isabeau handed Navarre the mirror and stood, brushing her hands together as he hung the mirror from his belt. “I believe I heard a spring in that direction,” she said, and pointed toward the south. “Be careful, my love.”

“Always.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her, and he reveled in the feeling of her hand as it reached up to caress his cheek. His magnificent Isabeau, the queen of his heart. To embrace her never lost its thrill, to kiss her always made him feel as if he had discovered the secret to life.

She laughed and pulled away from him. “Go,” she said, “or I’ll never get this fire made.” Turning her face to the side, she placed a kiss on Philippe’s head. “Look out for him, Philippe,” she said.

“I will, my lady.”

As they walked south, Navarre’s eyes accustomed enough to the limited moonlight that they could move fairly quickly, a silence fell between them. Though Navarre himself could go for long periods without speaking, he found himself uncomfortable with the silence now. “Are you well?” he asked. “I know that stretch of road this afternoon must have jolted you around a bit.”

“Me, sir? I’m fine.” Though it was hard to judge such things, filtered through a mirror, Navarre thought he sounded…distracted, perhaps. As if he had something on his mind.

It wasn’t usually in Navarre’s nature to pry about such things. A man’s thoughts were his own. But it was very strange for Philippe to be quiet about them, especially after the day of forced taciturnity he’d had. Perhaps a compromise solution, then, to keep the conversation going without pressing Philippe. “We’ll probably catch up with the bishop in two or three days,” he said. “We’ll need to decide on our plan of action sometime before then.”

Philippe lifted his head at this, making his whiskers brush up against Navarre’s chin. “What did you have in mind, Captain?”

He wasn’t a captain anymore, but whether it was the nostalgia of the title or the tickle of Philippe’s whiskers, he smiled despite himself. “We’re not sure when Pietro and Raoul will strike, except that it will probably be before they reach the outskirts of Aquila. From what you’ve said, I don’t think you’ll be able to identify them by sight. God help us, I think we’ll need to approach the bishop. We can hardly skulk around his escort attachment waiting for your friends.”

“Do you think he knows about you?” asked Philippe, sounding curious. Good, at least he was listening. “If you approach him, I mean, do you think he’ll let you?”

“Knows _about_ us? He knows _us_ —or, I should say, he knows Isabeau, and he had better let her approach him. She attended that chapel dedication where the king gave him the chalice, you know.”

“I _didn’t_ know!” He ran back and forth, to the edge of Navarre’s shoulder and back to his neck, twice. Navarre was no expert in the sentiments of mice or how they expressed them, but he rather thought Philippe was excited. “Has she _seen_ the chalice, then?”

“She has.” Navarre smiled, remembering Isabeau’s unimpressed descriptions. “She says it’s pretty enough, but that the king had better things to spend his money on than a nice cup for his cousin.”

“Oh.” That brought Philippe up short, and he stopped his fidgeting, curling against Navarre’s neck.

Perhaps, he thought, he ought not have told Philippe Isabeau’s opinions of the chalice; it wasn’t surprising that such an object held fascination for Philippe, with his romantic notions and love of other people’s possessions. And perhaps even that was uncharitable. If Navarre had never cared for such luxuries, he knew that they were within his reach, and they had been bread and butter for Isabeau, daughter of a duke as she was. Rich objects might hold more glamour for someone who was never likely to encounter them.

“You know,” said Navarre slowly, “Isabeau has a great many fine things in Touraine. Woven tapestries, and carved ivory caskets, and that sort of thing. All inherited from various relatives. You might have seen them if you’d come with us when we asked.”

Philippe’s mousy breath made a wheezing little sigh. “I’m surprised at you. Are you trying to _tempt_ me with Isabeau’s things? It’s a very strange thing to say to a thief—not that I’d ever steal from you or her, of course, God forbid, but it’s really not a good idea to appeal to such…such vain desires for earthly possessions. Morally or practically, I mean.”

It wasn’t surprising to Navarre at all, in retrospect, that Philippe had been raised in a monastery. “I’m not trying to tempt your soul to covetousness. I’m asking why you didn’t come with us. You know we would have welcomed you. Isabeau won’t press the matter, but I’d like to know. The truth, Philippe.”

Philippe pressed tighter against Navarre’s neck, and was silent again for long enough that Navarre thought he would get no answer out of him. But before he could speak again, either to tell Philippe to forget the whole thing or to say it would have saved them all a lot of trouble if Philippe could have at least not tried to get to Foix alone, the mirror at Navarre’s waist vibrated with Philippe’s voice again.

“It’s rather foolish,” he said softly. “And I’m afraid you’ll be angry at me.”

Given Navarre’s souring mood, it was a distinct possibility, but he took a deep breath and said, “Why don’t you tell me. No matter how angry I am, you know that I won’t harm you.”

“There are quite a few ways to hurt someone. A man does have feelings, you know.”

“You more than most,” Navarre retorted.

“That’s just it,” said Philippe softly. “I—oh, Lord, why do you put me in such absurd situations? Here’s the thing, Navarre.” He sounded determined now. “I was very angry at the injustice you and Isabeau suffered, you understand, and very sad. I thought it was the cruelest thing in the world that the bishop should have separated you like that out of nothing but selfishness and spite.”

“I know.” He did. It had been immensely gratifying to know that Philippe had offered to help him not out of the threat of force, which had kept Navarre and Philippe together before, but out of genuine sympathy for his and Isabeau’s plight.

“Good—I don’t want you to think that I was in any way happy about _that_. But in other ways, it was like…oh, you know how beautiful Isabeau is, and how wonderful and clever and kind she is. I’d never been so close to a noble lady before, and to be traveling with not just any noble lady but with _her_ \--!” Navarre smiled, neither surprised nor made jealous by Philippe’s effusion of praise, but Philippe wasn’t done. “And you! A brave, noble, handsome knight, on a quest to right wrongs and see justice done. Riding in to rescue me from the bishop’s guard. It was like a song, or a story about days of old, but you were both _real_ , and there, and so good to me.”

Navarre felt his smile falter. Whenever he thought of those days, some memories still stabbed him with sharp pangs of shame and regret, and most of them had to do with Philippe—threatening him with his sword, letting Philippe believe that Navarre would kill him unless Philippe got him into the city of Aquila, shaking him with a jealous rage until his tunic ripped, revealing the deep scratches and cuts that Navarre had given him. “I’m aware you’ve had a difficult life,” he said, his voice sounding stiff and gruff to his own ears, “so your standards may be low, but I was hardly good to you.”

“I disagree.” Philippe’s cold nose poked Navarre under the ear. “I’m not naïve, Captain, and I’ve seen a fair bit of the world. I’ve encountered a lot of respectable people, and I know how they see me. Like nothing. I’m nothing to them. Some dirty peasant who doesn’t even understand when they speak. They don’t care to know my name, or where I’m from, or what I’m capable of. I might as well be a real mouse all the time for all they care—some vermin you scare away from your valuables with a broom. But even at your angriest, even when all you wanted from me was to sneak you into Aquila, I never thought you saw me as nothing. And you don’t know what that means to me.”

A hard, painful lump rose in Navarre’s throat, and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

He didn’t need to, though, because Philippe was still speaking. “But I knew that—that it would be different when you weren’t on the run with the bishop. You wouldn’t just be a noble knight and a lady, you’d be, I don’t know, the lord and lady of a castle, with lands and taxes and things to think about. And what use would someone like me be to you? You’ve got a castle full of nice things and servants, with no bishop after you and no curse, and I’m a thief with no prospects or family or anything to offer a great lord and lady. Don’t think I mean this in a bad way, I know you’d be kind to me. But I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d go from being _someone_ to you to being one of your charitable obligations as the Lord and Lady of Touraine. Don’t be angry, please—I know it’s too much to ask, and you and Isabeau have each other, and of course there’s no more perfect love on earth, I just--didn’t want to give up the little piece of that love that was mine. I’d rather remember it fondly than watch it die.”

God, how he wished that Philippe was a man again. How he wished he could wrap an arm around Philippe’s thin shoulders and place a kiss on his hair. How he wished he had the words to express what it felt like to be the object of Philippe’s earnest affection, how honored and humbled and warmed to the core he was. “You will always be _someone_ to me and Isabeau,” he managed in a low voice. “The idea that you have nothing to offer us is nonsense. We’d rather you were safe and happy than have all the castles and carved ivory caskets in the world.”

Philippe seemed disarmed by Navarre’s words, and quiet fell again as they came upon the spring and Navarre filled the clay pipkin with water. This time, Navarre let the silence stand, too lost in his own thoughts to venture into Philippe’s.

He knew he had been blessed with a grand love in Isabeau, the kind that most men never found, the kind worth dying for. And Navarre had been ready to do so. He had never truly considered what it might mean to include another in such a bond, having never really needed to put what he and Isabeau felt for Philippe into a category. Philippe had been right in one sense—Isabeau and Navarre on the run from the bishop, the details of their birth and family more important in theory than in such things as securing them a place to sleep, were not the same as the Isabeau and Navarre who were married in the eyes of God and responsible for drawing up charters and supervising trade fairs and all the other things a duke’s heiress and her respectably born husband did by virtue of their places in society. Philippe had fallen naturally enough into a position between them once he learned about the curse, but Navarre was unsure how such a position could be created for them in their current roles, or even—

Navarre would be damned if he took advantage of Philippe’s love and youth and humble birth. Yet it was not hard to _imagine_ how he might occupy a position between Navarre and Isabeau that would certainly be pleasing to Navarre.

By the time they returned to the campsite, Isabeau had already gotten a fire going and had cut the meat and onion into smaller pieces. She looked up with a smile as Navarre stepped into the circle of firelight, Philippe still riding his shoulder. “Took you long enough,” she said.

“I think I might still be used to having a wolf’s eyes at night,” Navarre offered as an excuse. “Or, more to the point, a wolf’s nose.”

“Excuses, excuses.” She rose to take the pot of water from him, placing a light kiss on his mouth as she did. To Philippe, she said, “I’m afraid we must be shocking you with how soft we seem to have gotten.”

“Oh, not at all,” Philippe said, his voice lighthearted again. “Would we could all be so! Lord knows if I had the chance, I’d never go scrounging around for fire and water at night again in my life. Although now that I think about it, if I stay in this shape, I never _will_ have to.”

Isabeau shot him a reproachful look at that, which, given the darkness and the reportedly poor eyesight of mice, Philippe probably didn’t see. “A little faith, please, Philippe. Haven’t the three of us managed to break a curse before?”

Philippe stood on his hind paws and pointed his face in Isabeau’s direction. “True enough, my lady. I assure you, I have every faith in you.”

Would that _that_ were true, thought Navarre as Isabeau plucked Navarre from his shoulder and whisked him off to sit curled in one hand while she set the pot of water above the fire to boil. But it was hard to ask Philippe not to have doubts about the future when Navarre couldn’t quite see the shape of it, either.

The soup was plain, seasoned only by the onion and the salt that had been used to cure the meat, but after a long day in the saddle, Navarre found it as delicious a meal as any he had ever eaten. A little bread and meat served as Philippe’s supper, and he ate it with as much gusto as human Philippe usually did, which was to say that it was gone in a matter of minutes.

Afterward, full and content, they lay out the bedrolls. Isabeau and Navarre, as was their custom, placed them next to each other so as to be able to share warmth and comfort with each other. They settled Philippe on a saddlebag next to their heads with the mirror beside him, so that they would be close enough to help should an owl get any clever ideas but so that he wouldn’t be crushed if they rolled over in the night.

The night sky above was clear and spangled with bright stars, visible in irregular patches through the tree branches. The novelty of seeing the stars had not worn off for Navarre; in his mind, their beauty was fair compensation for the discomfort of sleeping on the ground. Though his body was exhausted, his mind wasn’t quite ready to submit to sleep, and he traced constellations with his eyes and tried not to think so hard about his damned amorous sentiments, which seemed unforgivably greedy to him at the moment.

Next to him, Isabeau shifted, and he glanced over to see that her eyes were open. “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

She groaned in frustration. “No, and it’s absurd. Every single inch of my body is tired, you’d think I’d fall asleep in the blink of an eye.”

“Well, I’m not tired at all,” said Philippe. “There’s really not much to do riding around in a saddlebag other than sleep. I won’t say it was _comfortable_ sleep, but it seems mice have a shocking amount of energy.”

“No need to rub it in,” Navarre grumbled, reaching under his back to find the rock that was poking him and fling it away.

Philippe must have gotten up and turned around on the saddlebag, because his tail brushed against Navarre's hair. When he spoke, the voice coming from the mirror wasn’t pointed but sincere in a way that hit just as hard. “I don’t think you’d trade places with me, would you?”

No. No, Navarre had trodden that path before, and had no desire to do so again.

Isabeau sat up and rubbed her eyes, the moonlight casting her familiar lovely form into something sharply shaded and mysterious. This, perhaps, was what Philippe had seen in his first glimpses of her. “Philippe,” she said abruptly, “would you like it if I held you?”

He was silent for a moment before saying, “If _you’d_ like it, my lady, but of course I wouldn’t presume to ask.”

“Presume away, I’m the one who asked,” said Isabeau, picking him up from the saddlebag and holding her hand out so that he could curl up on her palm. Once he had settled in, she stroked his head with one gentle finger. The peacefulness of it was soothing to Navarre’s nerves, and presumably to Philippe’s as well, because he was uncharacteristically quiet as they sat bathed in dim starlight, in this unreal-seeming moment of stillness.

He was content with the comfort of his life with Isabeau—he didn’t miss the constant fear of having all hands raised against him, surviving thanks to the ignorance of the people he passed among and the dwindling portion of his and Isabeau’s wealth that consisted of coins. He didn’t miss losing himself each night to an animal wildness he couldn’t remember in the morning.

And yet he resented sometimes the way that belonging to the normal, human world meant confinement. Expectations. He did sometimes miss the feeling that, like real hawks and wolves, he and Isabeau were a part of nature, their passions subject to no one’s judgment or scrutiny.

He stretched out and luxuriated in that sensation, and then he felt the calming caress of Isabeau’s fingers in his hair. “Out here,” she said, “it feels like our civilized life is the dream.”

“Mm,” Navarre agreed. “One way or another, though, we’ll have to go back soon.”

“I wouldn’t mind a bit of civilization,” said Philippe waspishly, and then, “I beg your pardon. That wasn’t meant as a criticism of any kind.” Still curled in Isabeau’s free hand, he nudged her fingers with his nose.

Isabeau smiled down at him. “I didn’t take it as a criticism.” She didn’t remove her hand from Navarre’s hair, but she curled the fingers Philippe was poking at around him to hold him more securely. “What will we do when we go back?” she asked.

“Do about what?” Navarre asked.

“About Philippe.”

At this, Philippe squirmed out of Isabeau’s grip, dropping down onto her lap, and she jerked in surprise.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right? That looked like an awkward way to fall.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “Only I meant to say that you don’t need to do anything about me, Isabeau. I’ve learned my lesson—self-sacrifice is for saints, and I’m certainly no saint. I can’t say I’ve got _much_ experience walking the straight path, but if your offer to come to Touraine is still good, I’m certainly willing to put in an honest day’s work. I’m still young, I can learn, and it’ll be nothing but law-abiding ways for me, I promise you. No more falling in with bad influences.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Isabeau. “And I’m sure Imperius will be, too. Do you know what it is you’d like to do in Touraine?”

That gave Philippe pause, and Navarre thought, with a bit of amusement, that there was precious little Philippe was interested in that fell under the rubric of ‘an honest day’s work.’ Finally, though, he swung his tail in a casual little movement that looked strangely like a shrug and said, “Whatever you like, my lady. Sir. I’m entirely at your disposal.”

Navarre raised his eyebrows, and Isabeau, who didn’t need words to know what Navarre was thinking, laughed. “Oh, Philippe, you sweet boy,” she said. “You shouldn’t say things like that, you’ll give us ideas.”

Philippe’s nose twitched, making his whiskers shiver. “What kind of ideas?” Navarre wasn’t sure if he was nervous, or eager, or simply curious—his tone was uncharacteristically controlled.

It seemed Isabeau heard this strange note, too, because her bright laugh gentled, and she said, “You know we would never do anything to harm you, or to make you unhappy. Not on purpose. So if you don’t want what I’m about to tell you, please just say so. But our hearts have been broken over you these past weeks.”

“They have?” asked Philippe quietly.

“Love’s a sweet pain, they say. But when the person you love is in danger, there’s not much sweetness to it, Philippe.” She scratched under his chin with a finger, and she leaned into his touch. “We can’t offer you marriage, because we’re already married. But our home, our lives, our bed? We’d give you those and more if you’d let us.” She frowned. “Or maybe give is the wrong word. Maybe ‘share,’ is better, because what a gift you’d give us, Philippe, if you would come and be with us and love us.”

Philippe blinked at this and turned his face in Navarre’s direction, and Navarre shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said, finally feeling as if it were possible to take some of that sense of freedom back with them to Touraine. “She speaks for both of us.”

“Oh. I…” Philippe shook himself like a wet dog and exclaimed, “Lord, am I dreaming? I don’t think I can be hearing what I think I’m hearing, and it’s cruel to play games with a man this way!”

Navarre laughed, warmed by overwhelming fondness, and reached out to scratch Philippe’s head. “You’re not dreaming, you fool.”

“It certainly _seems_ like I’m dreaming,” said Philippe. “Of course you know I’m yours, in whatever way you want me. You’re the most wonderful people in the world, you’ve had my heart for longer than I can remember. But I certainly never thought—I’d never want to _intrude_.”

“You’re not intruding on anything,” said Navarre, remembering those strange days when Philippe had courted Isabeau for him, and him for Isabeau. What it had felt like to be genuinely pleased by the presence of another person for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, the humor and cleverness and loyal, dogged determination with which Philippe made himself Navarre’s friend. “Your heart takes nothing from mine and Isabeau’s love—it only adds your love to it. I don’t pretend to understand dreams, and magic, and divine signs, but a dream brought Isabeau and me to you so that we could do for you what you’ve done for us, and if that’s not a message telling us we were meant to love each other, the three of us, I don’t know what is.”

“Oh,” Philippe said again, but this time it was more like an inarticulate cry of happiness, echoed by his squeaking mouse’s voice. “If only I were myself again, I’d say I was the happiest man alive, but I’m not, so I’ll just have to say I’m the happiest mouse alive.”

“You’ll be a man again in a few days,” Navarre said, feeling a new certainty. No God would be so cruel as to keep the three of them apart now, and no man could stand between them, _certainly_ not Pietro of Salerno or Raoul, son of Fulk the Butcher. “One way or another, I’ll see to it.”

“ _We_ will see to it,” Isabeau corrected, a sharpness in her face that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Let’s try to rest now, if you think you can. We have a hard hunt ahead of us.”


	6. I know more about tried and true enchantments and spells than Medea ever knew

A few days later, they caught up with the new bishop’s caravan. With some reluctance, they stopped before approaching to greet the bishop—Louis of Dreux knew Isabeau as a bit of an _enfant sauvage_ , but that didn’t mean he was ready for—or would even recognize her—in a dirty, sweat-stained tunic and riding cloak with her husband in dirty leather armor and a mouse riding on her shoulder.

Isabeau resented it—it seemed profoundly unfair, after everything they’d gone through and gained in the last week, to have to pretend Philippe away and squeeze herself and Navarre into boxes that hadn’t fit in years, but perhaps it would be good practice for the pretending they’d have to do once they brought Philippe back. Isabeau didn’t believe that most of her family’s old retainers would make a fuss about Philippe’s place in the household. They were too happy to have her back, and already used to what they saw as her strange ways. But it was an unfortunate truth of the world that, if it might have been easier for Navarre to have a peasant woman on the side, people didn’t make such allowances for a nobleman and a noblewoman both courting a peasant man. They would have to tread carefully, but it would be worth it to bring Philippe home with them.

In the meantime, they stopped overnight in Milan, where the bishop’s party was staying, so that they could wash up in a slightly higher quality of inn than they’d been frequenting on the road and purchase some new clothing that didn’t make it quite so obvious they’d been riding every day for over a month. Isabeau found her eye lingering over a roll of dark green cloth she thought would suit Philippe’s coloring quite well…but no, there was no sense counting one’s chickens before they hatched.

The inn’s stables had luxurious stables, and Isabeau and Navarre flipped the stable boy an extra few coins to ensure that Thessala and Goliath received the best, most attentive treatment. They’d earned it. Another few extra coins got them a private meal in the little room beyond the kitchen where the innkeeper and his family usually ate, which would have the added benefit of getting the rumor mill started. The more demanding and profligate with their coin they were, the easier it would be to convince Louis of Dreux’s entourage that the Countess of Touraine and her husband were, in fact, in Milan.

They ate their meal—tasty, if not luxurious—in relative silence. Philippe was nervous. Isabeau got the distinct impression that he was afraid both of what would happen if they should run into Pietro, Raoul, and Luchetto, and what it would mean if they didn’t. When she asked him about it, though, he’d only said, “ _Of course_ I’m afraid. It’s a very strange and frightening situation, and I was a coward even before I was an actual mouse.”

Navarre frowned at that. “You’re not a coward.”

“If you say so,” said Philippe with another one of those tail-shrugs of his, but he changed the subject then, and it felt unkind to press him further.

They were all tired enough that after supper, nerves aside, the comfort of the inn with its soft bed and warm floor where the heat of the kitchen below their room drifted up them was enough to send them all into a deep sleep. If Isabeau dreamed, she didn’t remember it when she awoke.

In the morning, she put on her new blue surcoat and gold-embroidered mantle like, she imagined, a knight putting on his armor for battle. Though her hair was still very short, Isabeau had enough experience arranging a coif and veil to hide that fact. The magic mirror was not particularly useful for checking one’s appearance, so she adjusted her hair while looking at her reflection in the washbasin.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Navarre looking at her, a familiar look of open admiration on his face. She turned to give him a wry smile. “Well, what do you think? Will I pass as the Countess of Touraine?”

“You _are_ the Countess of Touraine,” said Navarre plainly. “And I would defy anyone who said you were not exactly what a countess should be.”

“As would I,” piped up Philippe, ever the gallant. “In that blue, you’re as beautiful as a spring morning.”

Isabeau felt buoyed by their confidence in her, expected as it was. “Thank you. We’ll all need to keep a sharp lookout these next days or weeks—I’m afraid that I might be a bit distracted entertaining our host, assuming he lets us accompany him, so I hope _you’ll_ be on your guard.”

Navarre nodded seriously, reminding Isabeau of a time ages ago now when she had known him as a solemn, professional guard captain, an enigma whose mysteries she wanted to unravel. That solemn professionalism had not been a mere façade, though. Etienne de Navarre was a skilled strategist and a keen observer, talents that had served him well as a captain. “Between my eyes and Philippe’s ears,” he said, “they won’t escape us.”

“Right.” To Philippe, she said, “And you know your signals?” Time when he would be free to speak to them in the mirror would be at a premium—rumor painted Navarre and Isabeau in odd enough colors without revealing this latest magical development to the new bishop. Philippe would be spending the bulk of his time in Navarre’s belt pouch, where he was least likely to be spotted. The mirror would be in his saddlebag, where hopefully Navarre would be able to hear the signals without attracting too much attention from others in the bishop’s entourage.

“’Whoa there’ if I need to speak with you privately, ‘Easy now’ if I overhear one of our _friends_ ,” Philippe said promptly, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Anyone would think I had the memory of a sieve, as often as you’ve tested me.”

“I beg your pardon, Philippe,” she said, scratching behind his ears. “I don’t doubt you, really, I’m just nervous.”

As she had thought would happen, Philippe’s prickliness vanished in an instant, and he gave her a kind smile in the mirror. “No need for pardon,” he said. “Whatever else happens, we’ll be beside you the whole time.”

“He’s right.” Navarre lay a hand on her shoulder and leaned forward to kiss her, a passionate kiss turned comforting by the weight of his hand, which seemed to hold her up as much as it braced him against her. When he pulled away, his blue eyes were warm and certain. “We’ve faced one bishop together and come out the victors,” he said. “Louis of Dreux won’t know what hit him.”

Isabeau hoped they were right, because the spring morning Philippe had compared her to was brightening outside, and the bishop’s party would leaving soon, doubtless in hopes of reaching Melzo by sunset.

Unsurprisingly, the new bishop was staying in the most luxurious, expensive inn in town, practically a palace even in comparison to the upper-end establishment they had stayed in the previous evening. When Isabeau was a girl, she would have walked into such a place without a second thought—not out of arrogance, she liked to think, but out of an innocence, an expectation that the world might present her with annoyances but would generally provide for her needs in the style that daughters of dukes were generally provided for. Now something tightened in her throat as she and Navarre and Philippe approached the inn on horseback. She swallowed around the constriction and straightened her back. “Excuse me,” she said to a passing stable boy, aiming for self-confident courtesy. “Will you please take my and my husband’s horses, and have us announced within to His Grace the Bishop’s party?”

The stable boy, in his late teens and not apparently over-awed by their appearances, scratched at his stubbly chin and said, “All right, my lady, but who are you?”

She drew her face into stern lines and said, “Why, Isabeau, Duchess of Touraine, of course, and this is my husband, Sir Etienne of Navarre.”

“Oh,” said the stable boy, looking a little more impressed. He dithered for a moment about whether to take their horses first or to go in to announce them first before dashing off into the inn. Isabeau shared a grin with Navarre, but quickly schooled her expression back into cool sternness as the innkeeper and his wife rushed out to help her and Navarre down from their horses and escort them into the inn.

Waiting at the high table clearly reserved for the inn’s most prestigious guests, surrounded by a bevy of richly-dressed churchmen, was Louis of Dreux. The five years or so since she’d last seen him hadn’t been kind; he’d always had a tendency toward greasiness, which years of what she imagined was rather indulgent living had only exacerbated, and his hair, which had been rather luxuriantly red at the dedication of the Chapelle de Saint-Pierre, was going grey in patches that made his hair blend into his pinkish complexion. But his style was as grandiose as ever, luxuriant silks and jeweled rings, and his aura of smug self-satisfaction was just as she remembered it as he extended a hand for her to kiss and said, “Cousin,” in a tone that imagined nothing other than her complete and fawning respect.

Ugh. He had been precisely like this five years ago, and she hadn’t liked him then, either.

Masking her feelings with a polite smile, she sank into a curtsy to kiss his ring. “Your Grace,” she said, letting him pull her up, or rather, tap on her shoulder to let her know she could get up. “What an unexpected pleasure to meet you again,” she said.

“Indeed,” he said. “You’re looking quite well—so glad to see that all that…unpleasantness with the previous occupant of our see is done with.” His eyes traveled over to Navarre, and his expression grew just a fraction more condescending. Isabeau hoped she’d be able to prevent herself from gritting your teeth. “And this must be your captain,” said Louis in what he probably imagined was a tone of cordial politeness to one’s inferiors but came off as positively insufferable. “Captain Navarre, we have heard of your valor in defending our cousin from the shocking depredations she suffered, and we congratulate you on your advantageous marriage.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” said Navarre, picking up on the signal to kneel himself to kiss Louis’s ring.

Louis gave Navarre a tight smile before evidently dismissing him from his mind to address Isabeau again. “Now, what brings you here, without maidservant or bodyguard, so far from your estates?”

Here was the part that might be tricky—the part where they started spinning a story that would hopefully get them invited along with the bishop’s entourage. “Well, going to celebrate your assumption of the episcopal see, of course, Your Grace! We were terribly unhappy to have missed the ordination in Rome, of course, but we simply couldn’t get away from our obligations in Touraine quickly enough. And then on our way south, we ran into terrible weather, and unfortunately much of our baggage train was washed away in a sudden flood. We left the household staff accompanying us in Foix, to prepare a suitable escort on our way back.”

This was all bullshit, of course, but Isabeau hoped that Louis’s general lack of interest in things that weren’t himself, combined with her lifelong reputation as a bit flighty and wild, would be enough that the new bishop would accept it.

Louis blinked, and then frowned. “Why, that’s like something out of a romance—did you really travel all the way from Foix with no escort but your husband?”

“We traveled much faster that way, Your Grace,” said Isabeau, giving him a false smile that she hoped gave off an air of ‘silly girl’ rather than ‘woman sneaking her way into a bishop’s over-the-top escort.’

“Well, I won’t have that,” Louis said primly, apparently caught so off-guard that he’d forgotten to think of himself in the plural. “You must remember that these adventures of yours reflect on your family, cousin. I _had_ hoped that marriage would settle you somewhat, but I suppose one can only expect so much when a countess marries a mercenary captain.”

Isabeau felt her smile go brittle. “Why, Your Grace, surely you know my husband is a cousin of Queen Urraca—he’s hardly a common mercenary.” It was true enough, as far as these things went, though the baron whose lands and title Navarre’s father had inherited was an illegitimate son of one of the Basque kings of Pamplona. One of the King Gartzeas a Sanoitz, Isabeau couldn’t quite remember which one. The material point was that Navarre was ten times the man Louis of Dreux could ever dream of being.

In the periphery of her vision, she could see Navarre regarding the bishop with a look of mild amusement, and she felt her pulse settle. Who gave a shit what Louis thought?

Even Louis didn’t seem to care, dismissing Isabeau’s explanation with a hand. “All very well and good, Lady Isabeau. At any rate, you must travel with our party to Aquila, and _we_ will of course provide you with a suitable escort back to Touraine after we have settled in the episcopal palace.”

 _Yes!_ Isabeau’s triumph felt much easier to hide than her previous anger under a pleasant smile, and she dropped another curtsey. “You are too kind, Your Grace. We gladly accept your generous invitation.”

Louis nodded as if he were losing interest in the whole conversation. “Please, sit and dine with us,” he said, gesturing toward the innkeeper, who rushed off to grab more food. On the bench, a couple of disgruntled looking abbot types, doubtless the lowest ranking of the lot, moved at a nudge from Louis’s chamberlain, and Isabeau swept in with Navarre at her side, only wishing that one of the abbots had been the stuck-up toad from Rimont. So far, the plan was working perfectly.

The next few days, however, were a rather sore trial for her. Being beneath the bishop’s notice, Navarre was generally free to do as he liked, and what he liked was to travel alongside the entourage making polite conversation and scanning the crowd for anyone who looked like they might be a burglar or a Salernian sorcerer. It was easy to see where the bishop was keeping the great chalice, its box-like carriage being guarded by half-a-dozen guardsmen, and Navarre, in his element, had made a habit of drawing near these guards to chat about their experiences on the battlefield and keep an eye out for anyone who didn’t belong there. Besides them, of course.

Isabeau, meanwhile, was stuck making small talk with a bunch of interminably dull churchmen. She occasionally managed to wrangle herself into a conversation with a few pious noblewomen traveling with their husbands, which was a nice break and gave her a chance to catch up on some of the latest good books they’d read—Isabeau was still quite a bit behind when it came to literary trends—but mostly it was small talk about her father, pompous updates about Louis of Dreux’s accomplishments, and discussions of politics.

The nights were little better. To be sure, traveling in the bishop’s train was more comfortable, but it didn’t feel much safer. In the wilderness, Isabeau had known the enemies she faced, but she found herself intently nervous among the crowd of nobles, servants, and pilgrims that someone would overhear a careless word from her or Navarre or even Philippe.

As much as it wore on her, she could tell that Philippe found it even more exhausting. After their dizzying confessions of love, to be forced into silence all day and most of the night clearly went against every natural inclination in Philippe’s body, man or mouse. Even without being able to see anything from Navarre’s belt pouch, he heard much, and was insatiably curious about the people, news, and pageantry around him, but their hurried nighttime conversations allowed him little time to ask questions or talk about interesting things he had overheard. In addition, every day that passed without sign of Raoul, Pietro, and Luchetto pulled his nerves a little tighter. Isabeau worked at keeping her own impatience in check for Philippe’s sake. She was immeasurably grateful, she told Navarre in a whisper, that she had been blessed with such a level-headed husband.

Navarre had huffed out a quiet laugh at that, no doubt remembering many occasions at which he hadn’t been level-headed at all, and said to Isabeau in a low voice, “I have the easy job this time. Whatever I can do to make it easier for you, I will.”

She rolled over onto her other side to look at Navarre’s face in the dark. “Whatever you can do?”

As it turned out, Navarre’s fingers in her, moving in and out in a playful echo of his cock, teasing her with light little touches to the seat of her woman’s delight, his skilled mouth swallowing her breathy moans with deep kisses, made her heart much easier indeed. Any spies eavesdropping on their tent that night would have nothing to conclude but that she was madly in love with her husband, which was both true and something that Isabeau didn’t mind in the slightest if the gossips around here knew.

Afterward, Philippe, blinking from the mirror with dazed wonder, said, “Lord, it’s never been like that for me.”

She should perhaps have shushed him, but she was still floating in a state of hazy bliss. “It will be, sweetheart,” she said. “It will be.”

Two days later, the weather was cool and misty. It was pleasant enough for a morning when one didn’t have to go anywhere, but it made it difficult to make out the road ahead of them, and the usually scattered, motley group of travelers stuck more closely to the road, not wanting to get lost in the thick white fog.

Something about the isolating sensation of the mist sent instinctual shivers up Isabeau’s spine, and she ducked her way out of a conversation between three abbesses to ride next to Navarre.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think that if I were going to rob a bishop’s entourage of his greatest treasure,” Navarre murmured, “this is the morning I would pick.”

Isabeau nodded and felt for her belt. It was finely embroidered silk over sturdy, well-kept leather, and it did a marvelous job of distracting the eye from the dagger she kept hanging from it.

And yet, as the morning went on, the mist seemed to lift, and soon the people around Navarre and Isabeau lost their nervousness and started up their conversations again, their voices no longer lost in the hazy swirls.

“Damn it,” Isabeau cursed. The longer this went on, the more nervous she got that Raoul, Pietro, and Luchetto had thought better of this foolhardy, near suicidal plan. It would certainly have been the better decision for them, but if they didn’t come for the chalice, finding them promised to be a lengthy, slow search. For Isabeau’s part, there was only so long she could duck her responsibilities at Touraine, and for Philippe’s part, well, they still had no definitive answer on how long mice lived, and whether that also applied to young men who had been turned into mice by magic.

Suddenly, a muffled voice came from the saddlebag at Navarre’s side. “Easy now,” said Philippe, and new energy flooded Isabeau’s body.

Next to her, Navarre was suddenly on alert, as sharp and hard as his sword. “Where?” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“Left,” Philippe said in a theatrical whisper that was probably his best effort at being loud enough to hear while also not attracting attention.

Isabeau looked to her left. Off ahead of them, the carriage with the chalice rumbled on, surrounded by its own little entourage of men-at-arms. Behind it trailed a party of pilgrims from Geneva, largely merchants; Isabeau was familiar with them because the wife of the merchant’s leader had kindly shared with her a nicely written little book of sermons. The book was boring, but the woman was not, and she and her friends had shared with Isabeau perhaps the most interesting theological discussion Isabeau had ever participated in in he life. Trailing the group of merchants was a much less interesting group of young men Navarre had fallen in with a few days ago, largely younger sons of local Provencal and Italian lords who thought that a new bishop might mean new opportunities at the episcopal court of Aquila. Isabeau scanned both parties for unfamiliar individuals, people who might be hiding behind hooded cloaks or in the trees beside the road, but she saw nothing.

“What do they look like?” she asked in a low voice.

Philippe must have heard her, because he hissed in that same whisper, “Raoul’s broad, reddish-blond hair, handsome. Luchetto’s thin and dark and looks like he swallowed a toad. Pietro’s got a long face, pointy nose, brownish hair.”

Isabeau looked to the left again, and she could see that Navarre was doing the same, but she saw no one who fit the description of one of the men Philippe described, much less all three.

“Are you sure?” Navarre murmured. “You heard them?”

“I heard them, Navarre,” Philippe insisted. “Ask your mirror—doesn’t it show you the truth?”

Startled, Isabeau drew in a sharp breath. She didn’t know if it would work, since the spell had hitherto been used primarily to show them Philippe, but perhaps if the truth they sought was about someone else… “Philippe, you’re brilliant,” she said.

Navarre drew out the mirror from his saddlebag and angled it toward the left, careful not to let the morning sun rays catch anyone’s eye and give the impression they were signaling to someone out in the woods. The last thing they needed was to be suspected of being thieves themselves.

Isabeau leaned over eagerly to see what the mirror showed. “ _Monstra veritatem_ _de eo_ _quem quaero_ ,” she murmured. “ _Monstra veritatem de eo quem quaero._ ”

At first, the mirror showed the party of young noblemen, and Navarre frowned at it. But then, a glimmer of movement around the edges of the group caught Isabeau’s eye, and suddenly it was as if she was seeing through a veil she hadn’t noticed before. Three shapes emerged out of the fading mist—a long-faced, birdlike man, a grim man with a black beard and a dour aspect, and a handsome, friendly-looking man with red-gold hair.

Somehow, Isabeau had thought that Raoul the butcher’s son would look like a monster, his face reflecting his treacherous heart, but that was foolishness. She knew perfectly well that monsters hid beneath all manner of pleasant faces.

The three men seemed oddly unguarded for men who were about to rob a bishop of one of the greatest treasures of the age. Luchetto was obviously nervous, looking around as if he suspected that someone would reach forward to grab him at any time. Pietro seemed lost in thought, while Raoul strode forward confidently, an eager light in his eyes. None of them was making any effort to blend in with the crowd of young noblemen, and Luchetto and Raoul at least looked terribly suspicious. It didn’t take a master of dark arts to understand the situation: Pietro was doing…something magical that hid the three of them from view.

They hadn’t counted on Imperius’s spells.

Isabeau felt a familiar instinct rise sharp in her chest, a drive that now mostly only pricked her in dreams lately: _prey_. She grinned at Navarre, who smiled back, a smile that didn’t bode well for the three thieves. “Shall we, my love?” she asked.

“Let’s,” said Navarre.

Unlike Pietro, Isabeau and Navarre had no way of making themselves invisible, so they tried as best they could to be subtle as they drew up behind the young men and then passed them—the thieves, perhaps from eagerness or nerves, were moving quickly. Soon they were making their way around the cluster of Genevan pilgrims. Isabeau met the curious eyes of Ida, the woman who had lent her the book, and smiled in what she hoped was a casual, friendly manner.

Ida’s eyes darted from Isabeau to Navarre, who was still intent on the trail of the thieves, and she whispered something in German to the woman standing next to her. Isabeau wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or not by the fact that Ida, who’d struck her as someone possessed of a very sharp wit, had clearly perceived that something was not right.

But there wasn’t any time to worry about that now. The thieves had reached the carriage holding the chalice, and Luchetto, evidently the designated lockpick of the trio, was jogging along behind the slow-moving cart, moving a dagger around in the lock that held the back doors of the carriage closed.

Navarre drew his horse up alongside the head of the guards, a serious young man named Henri de Savoie. “Henri,” he said, “I’d keep a sharp eye out today.”

Henri shot Navarre a confused glance—he wasn’t a young man with a particularly mobile face, so the confusion mostly came across in the eyebrows. “Sir?” he asked respectfully.

“I’ve reason to believe that two notorious thieves, Raoul the butcher’s son and Luchetto of Piacenza, are even now plotting to steal the bishop’s great chalice.”

It was at this point that many things seemed to happen very quickly. Even as Henri said, much more sharply than before, “What reason do you have to believe this?”, Luchetto looked up from his lockpicking with a stunned expression and said, “What the _fuck_?” Having been distracted from his little run at the back of the carriage, he fell forward onto his face when the carriage moved on a few paces. Not expecting this, Raoul and Pietro both looked up sharply, and suddenly the three men burst into vision—not simply in the mirror, but in person, as if they had miraculously appeared into thin air.

The group of pilgrims drew up sharply behind them, calling for more guards. Isabeau heard Ida’s voice among them, and she urged Thessala on. Though this was precisely what they might have hoped for, they would need to move quickly now if they were to compel Pietro to transform Philippe back before the escort fell into complete chaos.

One of Henri’s deputies was quick to leap down from his horse and seize Luchetto, and two of his fellows were quick behind to grab Pietro and Raoul. Wheeling his horse around, Henri, looking less like a solemn boy and more like the tested soldier that he was, fixed the three men with a fierce look and said, “Explain yourselves. _Now_.”

Raoul, however, wasn’t even looking at Henri, but was instead glaring at Pietro. “The fuck are you up to?” he asked. “How can they see us?” His pleasant face was contorted into a grimace.

“I _told_ you,” said Pietro, looking remarkably calm, “the spell requires a high degree of concentration and thus risked being broken should the slightest distraction impose itself upon my consciousness. You agreed that it was an acceptable risk.”

Apparently unable to argue with this, Raoul turned his anger on Luchetto. “You, what’s your excuse, tripping about like a half-wit on his first job?”

“You heard him,” Luchetto growled, gesturing with his head toward Navarre. “He knew our names. He knew what we were doing.”

“I do hope you know that we can hear you,” Navarre said, one eyebrow raised. The three men looked at him, Luchetto and Raoul with rage in their eyes and Pietro with a gusty, resigned sigh.

From the way that Henri eyed Navarre, it was clear that he wanted to demand an explanation from him as well. But before he could do so, Pietro made a clicking noise with his tongue and closed his eyes, and the three men vanished once more.

The men who had been holding them recoiled, startled, and Henri’s eyes widened. “Captain Navarre!” he said in alarm.

“Magic. I knew it,” said Navarre, who was doing a fantastic job at performing the part of the stolid captain of the guard, if you asked Isabeau. “Surely someone among the men of the cloth here knows a prayer or rite against dark magic—quickly, send someone to fetch one of the priests, before these bastards get away!”

Too off guard to question Navarre now, Henri nodded sharply and sent his men off to search among the various travelers for a priest who knew magic, leaving only Henri himself with Isabeau and Navarre at the carriage holding the chalice. Navarre fell back beside Isabeau, who had kept herself a short distance away to preserve her illusion of…Countessness. He caught her eye before casting a glance to Henri, casting a hand to his saddle to retrieve the mirror and the belt pouch carrying Philippe. Isabeau could read his thoughts as if he had said them out loud— _I’ll distract him, you find the thieves._

She smiled back at him as she took the mirror and Philippe. _So I will_. She watched Navarre stride forward to speak urgently with Henri about the rumors he had heard in Milan of sorcerers making an attempt at the chalice, and pulled away, throwing her hood over her head and pulling out the mirror. The hood probably wouldn’t make too much of a difference when it came to concealing her identity, but it couldn’t hurt.

Dismounting from Thessala, she trod softly in the wet grass around the carriage, angling the mirror as subtly as she could to see her surroundings. “Courage, Philippe,” she murmured, hoping he could hear her from inside the belt pouch. “You’ll be yourself again soon.” She hoped she wasn’t promising something she couldn’t fulfill. It hadn’t been long enough for the men to get far, but if they managed to get into the woods, it would be a great deal more difficult to track them.

They hadn’t, though—evidently, Raoul the butcher’s son didn’t have any intention of giving up his prize. The three men were resting against the back of the carriage, Raoul and Luchetto having a fierce but silent argument. If Isabeau were to guess, she would have said, based on gestures alone, that Luchetto wanted to cut and run, and that Raoul would allow such a retreat only over his dead body. Or perhaps more accurately over Luchetto’s.

“You seem to have gotten braver, Raoul, son of Fulk the butcher,” she said, drawing near to them. “I can think of a time you didn’t mind cutting and running at all, leaving an eighteen-year-old boy to clean your mess up for you.”

Raoul’s head lifted and he peered at her in disbelief. “God _damn_ it, Pietro,” he cursed, but Pietro didn’t seem to care, staring at Isabeau with sharp, curious eyes.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Pietro asked. “Isabeau of Anjou. The bishop’s mistress.”

A shiver of disgust ran through her at the words. “I was _never_ that son of a bitch’s mistress,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” Luchetto said, his grim aspect getting grimmer in a way that Isabeau was starting to recognize as the closest thing Luchetto could get to expressing fear. “How can she see us?”

“If you know about my past, then surely you must know I’m friends with an expert in magic, the man who helped us to break the bishop’s curse.” Isabeau smiled at them, holding the mirror up in one hand.

“Well, bully for you, lady,” Raoul said, his tone light but his eyes burning angrily. “Weren’t you supposed to be the daughter of the duke or something?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer, reaching forward to grab her—only to meet her swiftly drawn dagger, pointing directly at his throat.

Of course, that was this weasel’s next move, thought Isabeau in distaste. No man who used and discarded a boy the way Raoul had Philippe would pause for a moment to try and buy his escape and maybe even his loot with a countess as a hostage. Louis would probably have let her die before giving up the chalice, but Raoul wouldn’t know that. Of course, he hadn’t counted on the fact that Isabeau was not an innocent child or foolish thug that he could frighten and manipulate. She gave him as cruel a smile as she could manage. “Oh, I wouldn’t try that, Raoul,” she said.

He narrowed his eyes at her. His own dagger was gripped tight in one hand—he’d drawn it as he stepped forward.

“I imagine you couldn’t care less about what happens to your compatriots here, Raoul,” said Isabeau. “But believe me when I tell you that _you_ ’ll be the one who dies if you don’t drop that knife here and now.”

Obeying, he tried to inch backward, away from her blade, but she followed. He cast his eyes over to Luchetto, giving a silent order.

A valiant effort, but not good enough. “Don’t get any ideas, Luchetto,” she said. “If you attack me, I’ll slit his throat, and we can try your knife skills against mine.” Luchetto blinked and looked from Raoul to Isabeau and back again, then sank back and leaned against the carriage.

“You seem to know an awful lot about us, my lady,” said Raoul. “I’m humbled, that the daughter of the duke of Anjou should know the names of common men like us.” He was smiling, now, evidently trying a new tactic on her. Isabeau tightened her grip on her knife.

“You think you’re going to charm information out of me, Raoul?” she asked. “No need to waste your efforts. I’ll tell you exactly how I know your names and faces. Philippe Gaston is a dear friend of mine.”

Raoul’s face passed through a number of half-formed expressions—anger, bafflement, calculation, impatience—before his smile smoothed back out and he said, “Ah, Philippe! A good lad.”

The audacity of the man. “He is,” Isabeau agreed. “So good, in fact, that he refused to go along with you on this harebrained heist, and you turned him into a mouse for his trouble.” She dug her dagger into Raoul’s neck just the slightest degree, and a few drops of blood welled up bright around the tiny wound. “And if you’d like to continue to draw breath, you’ll turn him back.”

“That little shit,” Raoul said. “How the fuck did you—”

With the hand that wasn’t holding her dagger, she dropped the mirror and reached down to open the belt pouch. Philippe scurried out and up her arm, perching on her shoulder. From the ground, the mirror said, “So we meet again, Raoul! I wager you didn’t count on _that_ , eh?”

“Fascinating.” Pietro of Salerno had hung back throughout Isabeau’s exchange with Raoul, seeming more interested than frightened. “So the mouse _does_ retain the mind of the man.”

“It certainly does!” Philippe’s voice was indignant. “And it would like you to remove this foul enchantment right now!”

Pietro hummed consideringly. He was an odd fish of a man, thought Isabeau. She had a good idea of what drove Raoul and Luchetto—nothing good—but Pietro seemed not even to understand the peril of his situation. “That may be possible.”

“ _May_ be?” Isabeau said. To her surprise, her words were echoed by Raoul, whose eyes had rolled to one side to fix Pietro with a cold look.

The casual shrug with which Pietro received this question suggested that it was only a matter of academic interest to him, curious but with low stakes. “Theoretically, the original ritual can be undone, though I have never done it myself, and it would take time and supplies that I do not have.”

Luchetto glowered at Pietro, and Isabeau thought she could read what was behind his anger—if Pietro’s part in this was to use magic to assist their thefts, then there was a real possibility that he might have transformed Pietro or Raoul and been unable to turn them back. If this had occurred to Pietro, it didn’t seem to bother him.

“What supplies?” Isabeau asked. She didn’t give a shit about honor among thieves.

“Hmm.” Pietro made another thoughtful hum. “How curious. This is actually important to you, isn’t it?”

“I told you,” said Isabeau. “Philippe is a dear friend.”

His cold eyes looked at her with dispassionate distaste. “Indeed. It never ceases to amaze, the lengths people will go to for personal passions. Illogical, but I suppose one must accept it as a general truth of humanity.”

“Indeed, one must.” She was growing tired of this. “Can you turn Philippe back, or not? Because if not, my husband stands not fifty feet away with the captain of the guards in charge of the great chalice, and I have no doubt that their reinforcements will arrive momentarily. If you are no use to me, His Grace the bishop might find you more interesting.”

Pietro favored her with a thin smile. “Well. There is one stratagem I might try.”

“Oh?”

He leaned forward, genuine emotion suffusing his face for the first time. “The great chalice of Bonneval has a formidable name among those expert in the occult arts.”

“For what?” asked Isabeau. She wasn’t surprised it had a reputation among sorcerers—it had a reputation among everyone—but so far as she knew, it was just a fancy, overly expensive cup.

“It is a _work of art_. The king obtained it from the Byzantine emperor—it was there, in the ateliers of Constantinople, that the greatest minds of their age crafted it after years of study. It is perfectly formed to neutralize poisons, break curses, undo enchantments….” His voice was speeding up as he went, getting louder, and Isabeau understood now why it was he had joined Raoul and Luchetto. He clearly didn’t care for the money. It was the magic.

But she wasn’t any more interested in his desires than she was in Raoul and Luchetto’s. All three of them seemed to share a profound lack of conscience, not a shred of compassion for the lives they had disrupted. Pietro’s quest for knowledge, like Raoul’s quest for money, like the bishop’s quest for _her_ , had left victims in its wake. But one of those victims, at least, would walk away unharmed if Isabeau had anything to say about it. And if it was Pietro’s knowledge of the chalice that rescued him—returned Isabeau and Navarre’s mouse to them in his own form—then at least it would have served some purpose in the world.

“All right,” she said, cutting off Pietro’s flow of words. “Let’s try it, then.”

The three thieves looked at her in surprise. Philippe nosed at her cheek. “I’m sure I can fit between the bars of the carriage,” he said from the mirror, sounding more cheerful than he had in days.

“But how will you get out again without being taken as a thief?” Isabeau asked.

“Oh,” he said, dismayed. “Capital thought. If I still had my fingers, I’d pick the lock, but of course if I still had my fingers, I wouldn’t need to…do whatever it is I need to do with this chalice in the first place.”

Pietro’s eyes gleamed hungrily. “As far as I know, Monsieur Gaston,” he said, “you have only to touch it.”

For the first time in a long while, Luchetto spoke up. “I can open it, my lady. I’ll do it, too, if you promise to let us go.”

Time was of the essence now; the whole entourage had stopped moving forward, and an approaching murmur growing into a roar as guards doubtless pushed their way through the crowds meant that their time to do this without being spotted was almost up. It no longer mattered whether Isabeau let the men go or not. Without removing her dagger from Raoul’s throat, she nodded at Luchetto. “Do it, and you’ll have my thanks.”

Four pairs of eyes, three human and one mouse, watched keenly as Luchetto pulled out his own knife again and went to work on the carriage lock. Isabeau could hear her heart beating loudly in her ears and took in a deep breath, focusing on keeping her hand steady and Raoul in her sights, lest he try anything now at the last moment.

After an interminable handful of moments, the lock made a rasping sound and fell open, and Luchetto pulled open the door of the carriage with trembling hands. And then everyone forgot for a second about the guards making their way towards them.

For all its great reputation, the great chalice wasn’t unusually large—one could easily drink from it the way one would an ordinary cup. But that was about all it had in common with an ordinary cup. Glittering gold and red and white, it seemed to glow with its own inner light, the jewels around its rim casting sparks of green light. The carvings were marvelously complex and delicate, not only the scenes from the Gospels which took up the center of each of the goblet’s four panels, but also the twining vines and leaves that made up the borders between the panels, little animals poking through the alabaster foliage. The masterpiece of a generation, people called it. It certainly was a very fancy cup.

“Oh, God,” said Pietro, reaching for it. “I never thought I’d see it, not in all my days.”

“Mind yourself, Pietro,” growled Raoul, no longer paying attention to Isabeau or her knife.

But Philippe was faster than both of them. Dashing down Isabeau’s arm, he climbed over Raoul, ignoring Raoul’s protests, and ran down his legs to the ground. Moving so quickly that Isabeau’s eyes could scarcely follow him, he ran to scale Pietro like a tree and to jump from his outstretched hand into the carriage. And then—

And then—

The light shining from the chalice was suddenly intolerably bright, like it was the sun itself casting burning beams through the cracks between the carriage’s boards and through the bars over its small window. Isabeau’s eyes watered, but she couldn’t close them—a pained groan came from the inside of the carriage, and she couldn’t turn away if he needed her—

The light from the carriage faded, and a pair of pale legs with dark hair pushed their way through the carriage doors. They dangled there, and then with another groan, Philippe pushed himself forward and out, standing with trembling limbs to lean against the outside of the carriage, naked as a newborn babe.

Isabeau had seen him naked before—on that terrible night that Navarre had gone through the ice and Philippe had gotten in to push him back out, she and Imperius had had to remove his clothes before they froze onto him, chafing his arms and legs and chest and wrapping blankets around him as quickly as they could.

But that had been nothing like this. That had not been anything like tracing her eyes along his thin, leanly muscled body, his well-formed limbs, being the recipient of his bright, if tired, smile.

It had worked. Their beloved friend had been restored to them, and Isabeau vowed then and there to herself that she would never permit them to be separated this way again.

It was, of course, at this point that Louis of Dreux himself, surrounded by a bristling wreath of armed guards, descended upon their little reunion and shouted, “What is the _meaning_ of this?”


	7. For joy, if ever I knew it, causes great suffering to be soon forgotten

In the end, Captain Navarre had handled the matter with more eloquence than Philippe would have given him credit for before. Spinning a story that would have done any romancier credit, he told the new bishop of the rumors of a dark sorcerer hanging around the environs at Lanzada, how gossip had swirled about his plans to attack the bishop’s caravan with two notorious burglars in his company, how news had reached Isabeau and Navarre and they had hurried to protect the bishop. According to the story, Philippe had heroically tried to warn the townspeople of Lanzada about the sorcerer’s plan and been turned into a mouse for his troubles.

Philippe supposed it wasn’t entirely untrue—if he had had a chance, he certainly _would_ have tried to warn the people of Lanzada, if only to distract Raoul and Luchetto long enough for him to get away.

The bishop had been profoundly disgruntled, both to have an attempt made on his chalice and that it was associated with magic in any way. But from what Philippe could tell, he was the sort who didn’t let much dent his ego or his confidence for long. Taking in the bizarre scene—Pietro looking at the chalice like a long-lost lover, Raoul looking like he didn’t know who he wanted to kill first, Philippe wearing nothing but Isabeau’s cloak, and Luchetto looking like he had already resigned his soul to God and was ready to lie down and die right then and there—the bishop had nodded slowly.

“Excellent work, Captain Navarre,” he’d said. “It’s clear that there is much for me to do once I assume power in Aquila—this devilish art has been allowed to flourish too long.” Nodding at his chalice as if it, too, had done an excellent job, he’d added, “Thanks be to God that I thought to bring this with me. I had not thought to be witness to a miracle today, but greater hands than ours have been at work here.”

Though Philippe had not expected it, he found he agreed with this assessment. _Thank you, Lord_ , he thought for the hundredth time that day, flexing his hand into a fist and marveling again at the way it moved. It _did_ feel like a miracle to back in his own skin.

The episcopal party had made their way to Bergamo and handed over Raoul, Luchetto, and Pietro to that city’s captain of the guard. Navarre had asked if Philippe had any last words to say to them, as he would doubtless never see them again.

“From your lips to God’s ears, Captain,” he’d said. “That’s all I want with them—to never see them again.”

Now they were cozily ensconced in an inn the likes of which Philippe had never stayed in before—at least, not in this particular shape. Grand as a castle, bustling with rich merchants and the even richer churchmen of Bishop Louis’s party, it would have been an absolute dream come true for any pickpocket. Not that Philippe took a personal interest in such things any more, of course, though it was astonishing how little these people paid attention to the money they threw around.

But he didn’t take a personal interest in these rich inn-goers, either. The only nobles he was interested in were currently sharing a chamber at the inn with him, and were sitting invitingly on either side of its large, comfortable-looking bed.

“Are you just going to stare at us all night?” asked Navarre, one pale eyebrow raised.

“I might,” said Philippe, his tongue moving without him giving it much direction. “You’re almost unfathomably handsome, you know.”

It was true—under all that armor and solemnity, Etienne de Navarre looked like he had been carved out of marble by a sculptor who was really putting his all into his work. But Navarre laughed as if Philippe had made a joke. And what a wonderful sound it was. Navarre hadn’t done a lot of laughing when he and Philippe were traveling together before, when Isabeau was still a hawk.

And Isabeau! The sight of Isabeau on a bed was enough to make any mortal man faint away. The curve of her breasts—the smoothness of her skin—her face as luminous as the moon—

“Are you all right?” she asked, a wry smile not covering the slight concern in her voice. “You look like you’re about to collapse.”

“I--.” It was a distinct possibility. For all Philippe loved a good romantic story, he’d long since known his own role in them. He was no Lancelot, rescuing Guinevere from the clutches of a wicked knight in dark armor. He was no Yvain, fighting demons and saving maidens and ending up with a beautiful lady for his wife in a magical castle. He was some churl who delivered a message at the beginning of the romance and was promptly ejected from the story. If he was lucky.

And yet here he was. And here they were. And at the end of it all, they would take him home with them.

And it would be his home, too. Lord, what a wonderful thought that was!

“All right,” said Isabeau. “That’s enough of that. Let me help you.” And then she was standing, and helping him pull off the nice new tunic they had bought him, and leading him to the bed.

It was unsurprisingly warm, as this _was_ a very nice inn, and someone had put a warmed brick at the foot of it, and Isabeau and Navarre had been sitting there watching him swallow his own tongue like an idiot for quite some time. He could feel the warmth from their bodies now as they pulled in the covers around them, and Philippe suddenly felt tears pricking at his eyes.

“This feels like a dream,” he said. “The most wonderful dream in the world.”

Navarre sighed and rolled onto his side to place a kiss on the side of Philippe’s head. “I have nothing against dreams in the ordinary way of things,” he said. “A dream led us to you, after all. But pray tell me, does this feel like a dream to you, too?” His arm crept down under the covers. There was a jolt of sensation as his hand brushed against Philippe’s cock, and Philippe jerked, suddenly very wide awake indeed.

“If you’re too tired, or you don’t want to, only tell us,” Isabeau said in a low voice from Philippe’s other side. “We wouldn’t harm you or do anything you didn’t wish for the world. Only I cannot _tell_ you how wonderful it is to see you like this, as a man again, and we’ve been waiting a long time.”

“Truly?” Philippe asked, feeling foolish again. Who questioned so great a blessing as this? Who looked a gift horse in the mouth when the gift horse was two beautiful star-crossed lovers who’d rescued him from life as a rodent? And yet, who expected the likes of them to take up with the likes of him? Even Philippe would have warned his daughters and sons away from him, if he’d actually had any daughters or sons. Which he didn’t.

“Truly.” She leaned over him to kiss him square on the mouth—not a friendly sort of kiss, either, but a deep one, her tongue seeking entrance to his mouth and gently, wetly taking it over. Pulling back, she placed a hand against his cheek. “You’re a very handsome man, you know.”

Philippe smiled at that, because what else could he do? “It’s been quite a while since I’ve done this,” he said. “And I’ve never done it with two people at once.”

“Neither have I,” said Navarre. His hand curled around Philippe’s cock, and he gasped a little, but he was expecting the touch this time, and God was it good, to feel that strong, sword-callused hand around his flesh. “But we’re all clever enough people. I think we’ll be able to figure it out.”

“We’ll have plenty of time,” Isabeau agreed.

They would, wouldn’t they? There was nothing stopping them from spending the rest of their lives figuring out how a knight from Navarre, a lady from Anjou, and a thief from Foix could best love each other. Philippe couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the shape of that future, but that didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t be facing it alone.

“I think the first step,” he said, “is kissing me again. Both of you, actually.”

Navarre stroked a thumb lazily over the head of Philippe’s cock and smiled warmly at him as Philippe let out a wholly dignified sound that was certainly not a whimper. “I think,” he said, “we can manage that.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the prompt "The Turnabout": "Post-film, Philippe goes his own way, perhaps promising to visit Navarre and Isabeau in the future, but not wanting to be in the way of the reunited lovers. Unfortunately, Philippe gets caught up in his own unfortunate circumstances - perhaps something magic-infused, perhaps a curse turning him into a *literal* mouse to match his nickname. Navarre and Isabeau might be the only ones who can help him, or who would believe his story at all." I hope this is what you had in mind!
> 
> The title is from troubadour Guillem de Peiteus's "Ab la dolchor del temps novel," translated as "A New Song for New Days" by W. D. Snodgrass. The chapter titles come (in order), from Guiraut de Bornelh's "Can lo freitz e·l glatz e la neus," translated as "When the Ice and Cold and Snow Retreat" by Robert Kehew; Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot (the Knight of the Cart) translated by David Staines; Peire Bremon lo Tort's "En abril, quan vey verdeyar," translated as "From Syria" by Ezra Pound; Bernart da Ventadorn's "Can l’erba fresch’," translated as "When Tender Grass and Leaves Appear" by W. D. Snodgrass; "Omnia sol temperat," Carmina Burana 136, translated by A. S. Kline, Chrétien de Troyes's Cliges, translated by David Staines; and Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain (the Knight with the Lion), translated by David Staines.
> 
> The chant that activates the magic mirror, "Monstra veritatem de eo quem quaero," means "Show me the truth about him whom I seek."


End file.
